A Plague of Heretics (34 page)

When his ale was finished, he prodded Brutus, who was snoring near his feet, and together they went out into the vestibule. Taking his cloak from a peg, John went out into the lane and looked hopefully at the house next door, but there was no sign of Cecilia. Though he had no real designs on her, the sight and company of a beautiful woman was always pleasant. Turning the other way, he followed his hound as he zigzagged his erratic path from bush to grave-mound across the cathedral Close.

As they passed St Mary Major, one of several small chapels in the precinct, he looked towards the small building that housed the proctors’ men, but there was no sign of either the bailiffs or their prisoners. Like Gwyn, he suspected that their incarceration would be far from rigorous – and probably brief. He doubted whether they would ever appear before the Consistory Court to answer for their behaviour in leading a raucous crowd through the streets of the city – and in getting very close to lynching the heretics. With a mental shrug, he decided he had no interest in their fate, but he still suspected them of involvement in the deaths of the three murdered men, though neither had he eliminated the two proctors’ bailiffs as candidates for those crimes.

As they neared Idle Lane, Brutus was confounded, as from long experience the dog turned into the lane from Priest Street, assuming that his master was going to the Bush. Instead, de Wolfe carried on down the slope, where some of the small houses were given over to lodgings for the more junior clerics from the cathedral. Every canon had a vicar and usually a young secondary living in his house as part of his establishment, but a number had no such patronage and found accommodation in Priest Street.

Thomas, since his restoration to favour after his years in the wilderness, shared a room there, and now John went to call upon him to make sure that he was well enough to fend for himself. Leaving his dog outside, he found the little clerk in his small chamber, eating heartily of the food that Martha had sent around from the tavern. Gwyn and his wife had already been to see that Thomas was comfortable back at his lodging, and John was sure that the little fellow would lack for nothing until he was fully recovered.

‘Fresh mutton pasties, Crowner!’ he said proudly. ‘And a trout baked with chestnuts.’ He displayed a wooden platter now devoid of all but a few crumbs and bones. ‘Gwyn also sent a gallon jar of good cider.’ He hoisted it on to the small table and insisted that John joined him in a cup of the powerful liquid.

‘You have made a remarkable recovery, Thomas,’ he said, lifting the mug in a toast to his clerk’s continuing health. ‘But you must not tempt Fate by assuming you are utterly recovered.’

‘But I feel so much better, master!’ protested Thomas. ‘God must have decided that there are still tasks that I can usefully perform on this earth – and one of them is serving you to the best of my ability.’

John grinned at his clerk’s earnest devotion. He certainly had recovered so rapidly that even the sceptical coroner wondered if the Almighty really had taken a hand in the cure. Apart from the lingering yellowness in his eyes, Thomas looked as well as he had ever seen him, probably helped by the mild euphoria that deliverance from death had generated. John only wished that a similar miracle could be worked upon his brother.

After they had talked for a little while, Thomas asked if any progress had been made on the murders while he had been lying in St John’s.

‘None at all, to my shame and regret,’ admitted de Wolfe. ‘I have four prime suspects, those bailiffs belonging to the proctors – and the two crazed fellows who have used holy orders to escape their involvement in the riot. But there could be others in the city demented enough to kill out of religious zeal.’

He was thinking of the ease with which Julian Fulk and the physician had roused the congregation at St Olave’s into marching upon the cathedral chapter. If such a normally placid group of people could be so easily inflamed, then there might well be some others out there who would feel it their sacred duty to carry out God’s will in exterminating any opposition to the Church.

In a little while the coroner left his clerk with further admonitions to build up his strength by eating well and resting, though he suspected that the conscientious little priest would soon tire of inaction and wriggle his way back to his former duties. Brutus was glad to see his master emerge from the house and even happier to find him turning into Idle Lane. The Bush was one the hound’s favourite places, where Gwyn or Martha would always find him a bone or scrap of meat as he lay under a table while the others talked above him.

Over a quart pot, de Wolfe and Gwyn discussed a few cases that were pending at the next county court and began to think about some others that would need work on them if the threatened Eyre of Assize came to Exeter in the near future.

‘We really need Thomas back in action as soon as possible,’ mused John. ‘It’s not the same trying to use the sheriff’s clerks in his place; they don’t understand the system like him.’

Gwyn was more realistic about the likelihood of the royal justices getting to the city. ‘It takes them years sometimes. We’ll have to make do with the Commissioners for a bit, I suspect. They’re easier to deal with than these bloody barons, who want everything written down and presented to them in duplicate.’

As neither he nor the coroner could read, they were totally dependent on Thomas to keep their records and depositions in order.

De Wolfe told his officer what he had learned from Matilda about the deputation to the canons concerning the leniency they had shown the heretics. ‘We are in the cathedral’s bad books for letting them sail away – though I am not happy about the fate of that fuller who decided to brazen it out here. I hope we don’t find
him
in a back lane with his voice-box lying alongside him!’

Gwyn nodded soberly. ‘I hear from the gossip in the tavern here that the search for new heretics goes on. It seems that those damned proctors’ men have openly offered money to anyone who will lead them to any folk suspected of deviating from the straight and narrow path laid down by Rome. I even heard that they are going to question all those who do not regularly go to Mass on a Sunday!’

De Wolfe scowled at this. ‘That will include you and me, Gwyn! Maybe I’d better accompany Matilda to the cathedral in the morning. It might save my neck in the long run!’

Partly because of his half-serious remark about going to Mass, but mainly because of his revived hope in the power of prayer to affect the course of his brother’s sickness, John volunteered to escort his wife to the cathedral next morning. She grudgingly accepted, mildly surprised that for once she did not have to nag him into this duty.

The nine devotional offices each day were for the benefit of the clergy in their endless glorification of God and, except on high festival days, they were not concerned about the participation of the public, considering this to be the responsibility of the many parish priests. However, Masses were said for the locals before the small side altars, and so on Sunday morning de Wolfe found himself standing alongside Matilda in the base of the massive North Tower. This formed one arm of the cruciform plan of the cathedral begun by Bishop Warelwast some seventy years earlier.

There were two altars against one wall, one dedicated to the Holy Cross and the other to St Paul. A small crowd had gathered before the latter, and they joined the back of the score of townspeople as the Mass began. The celebrant was a vicar-choral, aided by a secondary and another lay brother. John stared at him for a moment, hardly believing what his eyes told him, for the man was Reginald Rugge, whom he had last seen only the day before in the cells under Rougemont’s keep.

Unable to say anything to his wife, he suppressed his annoyance with difficulty. The sight of this near-murderer, who should have been hanged or left to rot in chains in a dungeon, being allowed to serve at the altar as if he was the epitome of devotion and innocence, made him grind his teeth in frustration. Presumably, the other bastard, the mad monk Alan de Bere, was also at liberty somewhere, even after the promise that they would be incarcerated in the proctors’ cells.

But he tried to dismiss the aggravation and concentrate on the actions and incomprehensible Latin of the priest, for it was for William’s sake that he had come today, to offer up his stumbling prayers for his brother’s recovery.

After the taking of the Eucharist, he marched Matilda back to the house, not a word passing between them, though she held his arm when in public view, in the usual possessive way she had, showing that she had a knight of the realm and a king’s officer for a husband. As soon as they were in the vestibule, she dropped her hand from his elbow as if it had become red-hot and yelled for Lucille to come and help her out of her cloak and pelisse, ready for dinner.

John would like to have gone down to Canon’s Row to talk to his friend John de Alençon, to learn what was happening about the heretic issue and the likely stance the bishop would take when he eventually returned – but he hesitated to do that when Matilda was around, as the archdeacon was certainly not in favour with her anti-heretic faction at the moment.

Mary soon arrived with the first remove, a small cauldron of steaming vegetable potage which she ladled into pewter bowls. Fresh bread sopped up the fluid, then she arrived with a ‘charlet’, a hash of chopped pork and egg, with milk and saffron, served on a bread charger. When this was demolished by the silent but hungry couple, the cook-maid brought her ‘Great Pie’, a small version of one usually served at Christ Mass. Under the crust, a mixture of chopped beef, chicken and pigeon was cooked with suet, spices and dried fruit. This was washed down with ale, but when a slab of cheese was produced, a jug of red wine from the Loire helped it to end the meal.

For once, Matilda could find no fault with the food and wordlessly pushed past Mary at the door, stumping up to her bed for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to go to St Olave’s. John followed her example, snoring before the hearth after he had finished what was left in the wine jug. Exhausted from his frequent journeys up and down to Stoke, he slept for hours.

When he awoke, to his surprise it was getting dark and he could hear his wife’s voice berating Lucille about some offence against her hair or her dress. There was a narrow slit in the wall between the solar and the hall, high up to the side of the stone chimney-piece, which allowed a restricted view downwards and some sound, when the voices were shrill enough. He gathered that she was being got ready for yet another foray to praise the Lord at her favourite church in Fore Street. Shaking himself fully awake, he called softly to the dog and slipped out of the house, grabbing his cloak as he went, for there was a chill wind outside.

He made his usual journey down to the Bush and spent a pleasant couple of hours talking to Gwyn, Martha and a few drinking friends who were regulars at the alehouse. Some had been old soldiers, and John liked nothing better than to relive past campaigns in Ireland and France with them. Even Edwin forgot his religious mania for a time, to join in with reminiscences about the battle of Wexford, where he had lost his eye and damaged his foot.

Outside, a chill east wind had come up, but the taproom of the Bush was warm and snug, the atmosphere being a heady mix of woodsmoke, spilled ale and unwashed bodies. Martha brought him a trencher bearing a pork knuckle, with a side dish of fried onions, and after he had chewed off the succulent meat, he dropped the bony joint on to the rushes under the table, where Brutus slavered over it for the next hour.

This convivial evening was suddenly disturbed by a man bursting in through the front door, a familiar figure to John and Gwyn. It was the beanpole shape of Osric, one of the constables, obviously in a state of agitation as he stared around in the flickering light from the fire and the few rushlights on their sconces.

‘Crowner, there you are!’ he cried. ‘There’s a fire started in Milk Lane. You’d better come quickly!’

De Wolfe jumped up at once, as did Gwyn and a number of the other men. Fires in the city were a very serious matter, as many a town had been razed to the ground from a single house going ablaze. Part of the coroner’s remit, irrespective of whether there were deaths, was to hold inquests into fires with a view to trying to prevent similar ones in the future.

The men hurried out, jostling through the door after the coroner, and began jogging to the end of Idle Lane, then up Smythen Street towards The Shambles. Darkness had fallen several hours earlier, and the pulsating glow from the fire was plainly visible over the roofs to the left. Before they reached The Shambles, Milk Lane branched off to the left, meeting Fore Street just above St Olave’s Church on the other side.

As they ran, Osric was alongside John and panted out what he knew of the conflagration. ‘It’s in one of the dairy houses, halfway along. Thank God they are well spaced out because of the beasts, so there’s less likelihood of the fire spreading!’

Milk Lane was named after the half-dozen cottages that kept cows and goats in their large yards, the tenants – or usually their wives – milking the animals and selling dairy products around the city streets. The beasts were fed with hay and cut grass and often taken on halters down to Bull Mead or Exe Island to crop the grass on the common land.

As they reached the corner, they saw a low dwelling well ablaze, with a crowd of people outside doing what they could to quell the flames. There was little water available, other than what could be carried in wooden and leather buckets from a couple of wells, but half a dozen men were dragging down the blazing thatch with long rakes.