A Plague of Heretics (33 page)

It was a great relief to both of them to know that their clerk seemed out of danger and likely to be back at work very shortly, in spite of the monk’s exhortations to rest for a while.

They brought their minds back to the business of the day. In the absence of any new dead bodies, rapes or fires, Gwyn wanted to know what was to happen to the two instigators of the quayside riot.

‘The sheriff has had to bow to the demands of the cathedral and give them back to the bishop’s jurisdiction,’ said John bitterly. ‘Though, as usual, the bloody bishop is conspicuous by his absence and I doubt if he would be very interested in such mundane matters, when he has the politics of England to amuse him.’

The coroner rose from his bench at the mention of the two renegades.

‘They were to be collected from the castle gaol yesterday. If they’re still there, I’d like a word with the bastards before they leave. I still wonder if they were the ones who killed our three heretics.’

With Gwyn clumping behind him, he hurried down the stairs and out into the inner bailey, where a cold rain had begun to fall from a leaden sky. They strode across to the keep but, instead of climbing the wooden stairs to the hall above, went down a few stone steps to the undercroft, a crypt partly below ground which occupied the whole of the base of the keep. A gloomy, damp cavern with stone arches supporting the building above, it was part prison, part storehouse and part torture chamber. Ruled over by the sadistic Stigand, the gaol consisted of a few filthy cells locked behind a rusty iron grille that divided the undercroft into two halves.

As they reached the bottom of the steps, Gwyn bellowed out in the near-darkness, lit only by a couple of guttering pitch-flares stuck into rings on the walls.

‘Stigand! Where are you, you fat evil swine?’ The gaoler was not one of Gwyn’s favourite people.

There was some grunting and shuffling and the man appeared from an alcove formed by one of the supporting arches. This was where he lived, between stone walls slimy with green mould, the floor covered with dirty straw. He had a hay mattress and a brazier for cooking and heating branding irons and the torture devices used in Ordeals.

The gaoler shuffled across to them, his flabby face appearing to join his gross body without the need for a neck. Two piggy eyes surveyed them and his loose lips quavered as he saw the coroner and his officer, as he had suffered from their tongue-lashings several times in the past.

‘Are those two men still here, the ones who are going down to the cathedral proctors?’ demanded de Wolfe.

Stigand nodded, but said nothing, and plodded across towards the iron grille. This reached up to the low ceiling and had a gate in the centre, secured with a chain and padlock. They followed him, regarding with distaste the short and filthy tunic he wore over bare legs. His unshod feet were black with dirt, and his leather apron was spattered with dried stains, the nature of which John had no desire to contemplate.

A ring of keys hung from his belt; he took one to unlock the gate. ‘They are in the first two cells,’ he said thickly, speaking as if his tongue was too big for his mouth.

The two visitors went into the prison, where a short passage led between half a dozen crude cells, each with a door of rusty iron bars. Only the first on each side were in use and as soon as the coroner and his officer appeared, the occupants began shouting at them.

‘I thought you were the proctors’ men – where are they?’ demanded Alan de Bere arrogantly. ‘We don’t want you bastards. We want to be taken out of here!’

Gwyn poked a brawny arm through the bars and hit the renegade monk in the chest, making him stagger backwards into the filthy alcove, where the only furnishings were a stone slab for a bed and a wooden bucket for slops.

‘Watch your tongue, brother, else Stigand here might feel inclined to cut it out,’ he said amiably.

De Wolfe turned to the other side, where Reginald Rugge was glowering at them through the bars.

‘Talking of cutting out tongues,’ said John, ‘do you know anything about the death of Nicholas Budd? For if you do, your good bishop may be handing you back to us for hanging!’

Blustering, but uneasy at the prospect the coroner had forecast, Rugge loudly denied any knowledge of the bizarre killing of the woodworker.

De Wolfe swung around to Alan de Bere. ‘And you, monk, did you take a knife to his throat? Or was it Vincente d’Estcote you killed and left to be dropped into a plague pit?’

Rapidly, he went back to the lay brother. ‘And was it you who took a trip to Wonford and stuffed a murdered man into a privy?’

John knew full well that he was unlikely to get a sudden confession from these men, but he always felt that if you shake a tree hard enough something might fall out.

When their loud protests of innocence had subsided, he changed the direction of his provocative questions.

‘Right, if you are as white as the driven snow over those killings, then tell me instead who put you up to inciting this riot on the quayside, eh?’

Rugge grasped the bars of his cage and glowered at de Wolfe. He looked like some madman, with his tousled dark hair stiff with dirt from the cell, bits of straw sticking out at all angles.

‘Why should anyone put us up to it?’ he ranted. ‘It is a Christian duty to cleanse the world of such vermin, who are increasing like the rats they are, procreating new blasphemers!’

Alan de Bere joined in from the other side, beating on the rusty iron barricade in his frenzy. ‘We need no one to encourage us in our God-given task!’ he brayed. ‘The good canons and proctors do their best, but they are frustrated by such as you unbelievers.’

Rugge returned to the tirade. ‘Even the bishop and his archdeacon are little help. They are too concerned with the trivial rituals of the cathedral and the finances of their treasury to bother with the cancer that is rotting the Holy Church in the shape of these heretics!’

The coroner was not impressed by their fervent denials. ‘You were only too willing to murder those men on the wharf!’ he shouted back at them. ‘If I and other forces of law and order had not arrived in time, you would have hanged them out of hand! Is that the act of the Christians who you are so keen to defend? I thought that kindness and compassion was the code that they professed.’

Reginald Rugge had a ready answer for him. ‘Like the compassion you Crusaders showed at Acre, when you and your king beheaded almost three thousand Saracen prisoners?’

‘That was an entirely different matter; that was war!’ retorted John, but he felt uneasy, as it was an episode that had shaken his respect for his hero, Richard Coeur de Lion. ‘And anyway, as Mohammedans, were they not the ultimate heretics in your eyes?’

What promised to become a theological altercation conducted at the tops of their voices was interrupted by the sound of boots on the steps outside and calls for the gaoler. Stigand shuffled out through the gate and a moment later the two proctors’ bailiffs appeared, clutching their long staves. Herbert Gale also had a coil of thin rope in his other hand. Like his colleague William Blundus, he was not pleased to see the coroner and his officer.

‘These are our prisoners now, Sir John,’ grated the senior bailiff with reluctant deference to the coroner’s rank.

‘And you are welcome to them, for now,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘I suspect we may have the pleasure of their company here again, when the bishop decides to turn them over to the secular powers for sentencing.’

He said this more for his own satisfaction than in any hope of it being true, for he knew that the Church liked defying the king as a matter of principle, especially as Bishop Marshal was a supporter of Prince John in the latter’s striving to depose his elder brother from the throne of England.

He stood aside with Gwyn as Stigand unlocked the chains around the two cell gates and let the prisoners out into the passage. They watched as Blundus took the rope from Herbert Gale and tied one end around the wrists of the wretched monk and the other in a similar fashion to those of Rugge.

‘Come on, then, down to the Close with you!’ commanded Herbert Gale, grabbing the centre of the rope and tugging the two men out into the undercroft. With a smirk of triumph at the coroner, Alan de Bere followed, stumbling alongside his fellow prisoner. With William Blundus bringing up the rear, they climbed the steps to the inner ward and vanished.

Gwyn spat contemptuously on the ground. ‘Did you see the wink that bastard Blundus gave them as he tied them with those knots that a newborn babe could undo? I’ll wager they’ll be on the loose again before the sun rises tomorrow!’

At the dinner table John thought it politic not to mention to Matilda his meeting with Cecilia that morning, as it would only be asking for more sneers about his trying to inflict his lustful desires upon the fair lady. However, given what the physician’s wife had had to tell him, he wanted to know what Clement had been saying in the chapter house that morning.

For once, Matilda was only too ready to talk. ‘It was a great success, thanks be to the doctor!’ she effused. ‘Some of the canons were most receptive, and Robert de Baggetor actually apologised for the leniency with which those blasphemers were treated.’

Then she glared at him over her bowl of hare stew. ‘Your friend the archdeacon tried to play down the whole affair and came in for some criticism – and your name was bandied about, much to my shame!’

He ignored this and asked, ‘Did your delegation actually go into the chapter meeting?’

She shook her head sourly. ‘The archdeacon forbade it. He said that it was a private conclave of the cathedral. We had to stand outside in the cold and petition the canons as they came out.’

De Wolfe speared a leg of hare with his eating-knife and added it to the broth in his pewter bowl. ‘And what part did our neighbour play in this enterprise?’ he asked in a neutral tone, not wanting to arouse any more of his wife’s antagonism.

‘He was our leader, rather than Father Julian,’ she said proudly. ‘He was most eloquent, polite and deferential to the higher churchmen, but still firm and persuasive. He emphasised that the population of the city were the soil from which the cathedral and other churches were nourished and it was only right that their voices were heard.’

‘A courageous man,’ observed John dryly. ‘If he dared to voice opinions like that to most of the barons or the king’s court, they would have had him hanged for sedition and fomenting revolution!’

Matilda failed to recognise his irony and preened herself in the reflected glory of the outspoken doctor. ‘He is a remarkable man. I feel he is wasted as a physician, noble though that profession may be. He could have been a major cleric or an officer of state.’

‘And what was the outcome of his efforts?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘Four or five of the canons, including the two who are proctors, promised to press the bishop most strongly as soon as he returns. They will insist on his arresting all known heretics and those suspected of such evil leanings, to bring them before a properly constituted ecclesiastical court – and to demand the most stringent penalties allowed by the Papal edicts. They will also insist on the proper harnessing of the secular powers, as prescribed by the Holy Father and his Legates.’

She scowled at her husband even more fiercely. ‘So you and that lazy idiot of a sheriff will not be able to slide out of your responsibilities in future!’

Matilda suddenly seemed to realise that she was failing in her long-lasting campaign of ignoring her husband, after all the indignities and disappointments that he had heaped upon her. She fell silent and attacked an inoffensive boiled capon as if it was John himself, savagely tearing off a leg and gnawing at it to indicate that the conversation was at an end, but her husband doggedly pursued the subject, as he needed to know what was in store, especially if it led to more unrest, riots and even murders.

‘So what will happen until the bishop eventually arrives home?’ he asked with false innocence. ‘Have they found more heretical victims to persecute?’

She stared at him suspiciously but put down her chicken leg to take a drink from her wine-cup. ‘Canon William de Swindon, one of the proctors, told us that they will be sending out their bailiffs again, together with other agents, to seek informants who will trawl for unbelievers, both in the city and the county. They already know of one, the man who did not escape on that ship, no thanks to you!’ she snapped. ‘But they admit that until Bishop Marshal returns, there is little point in arresting him, as there is no competent tribunal able to try him.’

‘I suppose they mean that fuller, whose name I forget,’ he mused. Silently, he hoped the man would see the dangers and quietly leave the city, together with his family, if he had one. His wife made no reply, concentrating on her stew, her fowl and then the dessert that Mary brought in, a rosy almond cream with cinnamon and ginger.

After the meal, when Matilda had stumped off to the solar for her afternoon rest, John sat by his fire with a jug of ale, as the day had turned colder, though the rain had stopped. He mused that autumn had not yet seemed to make its mind up to turn into winter, the flurries of snow that fell a couple of weeks earlier having turned to cold rain and occasional fog. He threw on a couple more oak logs from the stack alongside the hearth, stamping out some glowing embers that flew from the fire on to the stone floor. That was one fad of Matilda’s that was useful, as she had insisted on having the hall flagged, instead of the usual reeds or straw scattered over beaten earth. At least, he thought, it saves having the bloody stuff catching fire every time a spark spits out of the fire.