Authors: Stephen Wheeler
INTERVIEW WITH A SHERIFF
‘Keep
heart and all will be well?’
‘I was merely fortifying him for the coming ordeal, my lord. I am a priest as well as a physician, as I pointed out some days ago. As such I am as much concerned with the spirit as with the body.’
We were in Samson’s now empty study which Sir Peter was using as his temporary office. I was standing in front of the desk while he sat behind it, one well-shaped thigh crossed over the other, one finger stroking his immaculately-trimmed beard. Also there, and glowering at me with undisguised resentment, was the young guard I had tricked into letting me into the church, while perched prominently on the desk between us all was my medical satchel and the empty water bottle. I had no doubt the bag had already been thoroughly searched. Fortunately there was nothing in it other than bandages and a few loose herbs. If there had been anything else I was sure I wouldn’t be standing here now but languishing in the town gaol up on Guildhall Street.
‘Fortifying wasn’t all you were doing though, was it brother?’ the sheriff was saying.
‘If you mean I was attending to Hamo’s injury, I don’t deny it. Surely you wouldn’t begrudge the man a little medical relief? He’s supposed to die from hunger, isn’t he, not gangrene? As a physician I’m obliged by my oaths to attend all who fall ill whosoever they are and howsoever they came to their condition.’
‘Physician, monk, priest,’ the sheriff growled. ‘You hide behind your professions, brother. What about this?’ He held up the water bottle. ‘Are you plumber as well now?’
‘I told your man here all about that,’ I said nodding to the scowling guard. ‘I used it to clean Hamo’s wound.’
‘He told me it were ak-war-vee-tar,’ glared the boy resentfully. ‘For rubbing, he said.’
The sheriff cocked one elegant eyebrow. ‘Aqua vita brother?’
I shrugged. ‘Water of life.’
Sir Peter pouted. ‘It’s just plain water, which I’ve no doubt you gave to Hamo to slake his thirst.’
This time I feigned astonishment. ‘My lord sheriff, have you tried drinking the water in Bury? It’s lethal. The streams hereabouts are open sewers. If Hamo had drunk it you wouldn’t need to worry about hanging him. He’d be dead within the week from the flux.’
Actually, looking at Sir Peter I doubted if anything less than the finest Gascony grape had ever passed those discriminating lips. But hey-ho.
‘And besides,’ I continued getting into my stride now, ‘your instructions were quite clear on the subject. Had I given him anything to drink you would be perfectly within your rights to declare the sanctuary void and take Hamo into custody. Why would I risk that? No no, I assure you the water was for external use only, as I told your man here.’
The sheriff clearly didn’t believe a word of it. But nor did he have any proof that Hamo did drink the water - which, incidentally, came from a spring on my mother’s estate in Ixworth, a fresh supply of which I have delivered daily to my laboratorium. But Sir Peter didn’t know that. And since no-one in their right mind would drink untreated town water there was just enough doubt for Sir Peter not to pursue the matter further.
‘All right Martin,’ he said to the guard. ‘You can go.’
The boy scowled at me one more time before skulking out the room.
‘Brother Walter,’ sighed Sir Peter when he’d gone, ‘this man Hamo is wanted for the most heinous of crimes - the taking of another man’s life. In any other circumstance he would be in custody now awaiting trial. Giving him comfort is not what we are about. Indeed, the exact opposite: the
less
comfortable I can make him the sooner he will give up this sanctuary nonsense. I have a great many of my men tied up guarding him which means that they are unavailable for other duties, not to mention the expense. Please believe me when I say I will have this matter settled and will come down hard on any who try to confound me.’
I looked at him intently. ‘By “resolved” I presume you mean execute him?’
‘If that is what the coroner decides, yes.’
‘And if he’s innocent?’
‘Then he will go free. We are not judges, Brother Walter. Our job is to apprehend men like Hamo and bring them to the courts. It is for the justices to decide guilt or innocence. Whatever else you may think of me I am concerned only with the due process of law. You were there when all this was discussed with the abbot. If I had my way I’d have him arrested right now. But I am prepared to abide by the rules - which is more than you seem to want to do. So consider yourself on notice. If you so much as break sweat on this man then sanctuary or no sanctuary I will arrest him - and you too - and have you both up before the judges. Have I made myself clear?’
‘W-well done,’ said Jocelin when the three of us met up again later.
‘I don’t know if it was well done. I think I may have made matters worse. The sheriff’s men will be on their guard from now on. I doubt we’ll get within a hundred yards of him.’
‘No no,’ he insisted. ‘You sh-showed Hamo that he isn’t alone. That must have g-given him heart.’
‘Heart is about all we will be able to give him.’
‘Does that mean you want to abandon the plan?’ said Jocellus.
‘I don’t see how we can. Hamo’s been living in the open for a fortnight. He’s weak. And he’s got another thirty-nine days of this to go. He’ll never last. We must try to help him. On the other hand the sheriff made it quite plain what he would do if he catches us again. But it’s not just up to me, is it?’
The other two looked at each other.
‘I’m for carrying on,’ said Jocellus.
‘M-me too,’ said Jocelin.
I nodded with relief. ‘The good thing is the guards don’t know you two. It’s me they’ll be watching out for.’
The vespers bell started to ring calling us to the church.
‘Tomorrow then, brothers. God speed us all, and let us pray we haven’t forgotten anything.’
LARGER THAN LIFE
We
were all set, then, to put our plan into action. But there was a problem. Up till now the majority of my brother monks hadn’t taken too much notice of what had been going on around them. That’s the nature of our calling. Be it war, famine or flood, whatever happens outside the abbey walls generally stays outside. But it’s not easy to ignore a squad of armed guards patrolling the normally secluded abbey grounds. Some of the monks were starting to complain about the disruption, firstly to each other and then to the rest of the fraternity in chapter.
The problem was the location Hamo had chosen for his asylum. Usually when a fugitive seeks sanctuary it is to his local parish church that he runs. But Hamo’s parish of Saint Mary-atte-Bow was eighty miles away. He could have chosen any other church to stake his claim - Saint Mary’s or Saint James’s, both being within the convent grounds, either would have sufficed. But he chose Saint Edmund’s. Perhaps he thought the presence of the shrine would give him added security - or maybe he just wanted to make the grand gesture. Whatever the reason, he could not be ignored.
Normally once sanctuary has been claimed the church’s great oak door is slammed shut thus securing the fugitive inside. Simple in a small parish church, but with Saint Edmund’s this was not possible. First of all, as we have seen, there is the problem of too many doors some of which have to remain open for all or part of the day. Then there is the shrine itself. Pilgrims come from all over the world to visit the saint often travelling for many days and sometimes months to get here. It would be unconscionable to deny them access. Lastly - and this is what was really concerning the monks - there is the daily ritual of nine offices which are sung in the quire. If all eighty monks had to be searched every time they entered the church, services would never get finished - indeed, they would never get started. If this level of disturbance were to persist for the full forty days of Hamo’s refuge it would make our lives intolerable.
This, then, was the matter under discussion in chapter on the very morning Jocellus, Jocelin and I were to put Operation Hamo into action. This time Hugh the sacrist, as the most senior obedientiary, deputized for the absent Samson. Hugh is a wonderfully gentle man but as a debating referee he is hopeless especially when tempers became heated. And there was no one more determined to turn up the temperature than Abbot Eustache whose presence in chapter once again was uninvited. It was obvious straight away what his agenda was: to create as much opposition to Hamo’s presence in the chancel as possible in order to get him ejected from the church and into the clutches of Sheriff Peter. But this time we were prepared for him and the person putting up the strongest defence was, to my surprise and delight, Jocellus. Every point Eustache made Jocellus countered with one of his own. I must say I was much impressed with his fervour never having realized before just what a champion of Hamo’s rights he was turning out to be. Indeed, it was largely Jocellus who swung the vote in our favour. His solution was elegant in its simplicity. Why not hold the office services in Saint James for the duration of the sanctuary period? To the obvious annoyance of the abbot-legate the solution was adopted unanimously. Having thus cleared the decks of obstacles, so to speak, Jocellus, Jocelin and I set off on our quest as soon as chapter was over.
We chose our timing carefully. Being the middle of the day most people are lethargic after dinner and visitor numbers at the shrine are at their lowest. I approached the guard at the entrance to the west door, the same one that had been there all week. From a distance he looked like a giant, a good head and shoulders above any of his colleagues. Up close he was even more terrifying. I had no proof this was the man who had assaulted Cathrin but from her description there could surely be no other. If this man wanted his way with a woman I doubted there was much any could have done to stop him. He was seated on a stool next to the west door paring his nails with a knife and waiting for the next pilgrim to arrive. I took the opportunity during the lull to engage him in amiable conversation:
‘What ho, my good man, and how are you this fine bright day?’
He fixed me with a suspicious stare. Undeterred, I pulled up another stool and tried again.
‘Strikes me you’re not a local chap - am I right? I think a fellow of your size would have been noticed if you’d lived in this neck of the woods for very long.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Neck of the woods?’
I smiled. ‘It’s a local saying. You’re obviously not from these parts.’
‘I am from Brabant,’ he said in his curious sing-song accent.
‘Ah, Flemish!’ I beamed. ‘How marvellous! The Low Country. Beautiful land, beautiful language - beautiful people, hey what?’
He raised a curious eyebrow. ‘You know mine folk?’
‘I - yeh - eee - well no, actually. But I have heard much about them.’ I leaned forward confidentially. ‘Especially the ladies, hey what? We’ve all heard of Flemish ladies.’ I winked, I hoped, lasciviously.
Suspicious again, he looked me up and down. ‘What would a monk know of ladies?’
I guffawed loudly. ‘My dear good fellow, I may be a monk but I am still a man, hey what?’
A glimmer of a salacious smile at that. ‘I never believed those stories about monks and arses.’ He spat a gob of phlegm on the ground. ‘
Walgelijk
.’
‘Walker-like?’
‘Disgusting.’
‘Oh, disgusting - quite so,’ I nodded eyeing the gob.
‘Our women - now that is a different neck of the woods. In Brabant we have proper women, not like these
breekbaar
English dolls. Strong limbs. Wide hips. Good wrestling on the bed - if you know what I mean, brother,’ he winked - definitely lasciviously.
I winked back. ‘I do indeed. Good wrestling - like the glove-seller’s wife, hey what?’
He frowned and shook his head. ‘
Nee man
. She was
te makkelijk
.’
‘Tee marker-like?’
‘Too easy.’
‘Oh - yes.’
Poor Cathrin. With this brute on top of her she wouldn’t have had a chance.
‘But I bet the Flemish girls like a bit of rough treatment though - from a big strong chap like you?’ I gave him a playful punch on the arm and nearly broke my fingers. It was solid as a rock.
He grinned broadly. ‘Women like a real man
met echte kracht
.’ He flexed his bicep. ‘Feel that.’
I squeezed the muscle with both my hands together. It felt like stone.
‘Now watch.’
He took out the knife he had been using earlier to pare his nails and demonstrated its blade by easily slicing through a thick piece of leather that I suspect he kept in his pouch specifically for the purpose. Then he did something that nearly made me throw up: he gripped the blade firmly in his calloused left hand and drew the knife out slowly with the other. If I had done that all my fingers would now be lying on the ground in a bloody mess. But when he opened his fist there was barely a mark where the blade had gone.
‘Impressive,’ I said sincerely.
All the while he was doing this I could see out of the corner of my eye Jocellus slowly approaching the west door from the direction of the great cemetery. If I didn’t know it was Jocellus I would never have guessed. He seemed to have doubled in size and was bent over like an old man. He walked like he had the severest case of haemorrhoids. I tried not to look at him directly but to keep my eye firmly on my Flemish friend. Another few steps and Jocellus would be in through the door.
Unfortunately he never got that far. I was about to start on some other exhilarating aspect of Flemish culture with my new friend when to my dismay Abbot Eustache suddenly appeared from around the side of the church and put his hand on Jocellus’s shoulder.
‘You!’ he said ‘I’ve been watching you. I know what you are up to!’
There then followed a sort of grotesque grappling contest between the two of them. If you can imagine a sparring match between a lumbering ox and an angry billy-goat, that’s what it looked like and ended only when out from the bottom of Jocellus’s robe fell all the food we had secreted there - bread and sausage and cheese and pies all tumbling onto the dusty ground around them. I groaned with despair. It seemed Gilbert’s seamstressing skills weren’t up to all that much after all.
‘Aha!’ bellowed Eustache triumphantly. ‘So this is how the thief goes in the night!’ and he dissolved into some rapid colloquial French which I couldn’t follow. To my surprise Jocellus jabbered back at him impressing me once again with skills I never knew he had. My Flemish friend didn’t bother to intervene. He merely glanced over his shoulder at the two squabbling monks and then back at me. I tried to smile and shrug wondering if I might be able to get to my feet before that great club of a fist of his came down on top of my head.
But then something else caught our collective attention, a sound that chills every Christian’s bone to the marrow: the dreaded dull clinking of the leper’s knell:
‘Unclean! Unclean!’
From the left now came a dreadful apparition: mutants, two of God’s mis-creations, hellions from the depths of Hades swathed head to foot in filthy rags to hide their disintegration into some freakish parody of humanity. No-one dare come within breathing distance of a leper lest they inhale its foul breath and become infected too. Even the Flemish giant got to his feet and took a step back.
‘Alms for the afflicted! Unclean! Alms for the afflicted!’
The miserable half-blind creatures slowly made their way towards the church led, incongruously, by a pretty young girl. The sight of such a beautiful creature leading these two depredates was even more distressing than the lazars themselves for though she looked perfectly healthy she too must surely be infected. Everyone moved out of their way as the trio came inexorably to the church door and then - horror of horrors - went inside. A moment later we could hear the screams as pilgrims and monks came pouring out in terror, their hands covering their mouths and noses in their dash to breathe God’s clean air.
But wait a minute. That young girl. Surely I recognized her. Wasn’t she the one waiting in the queue at the almonry the day Brother Fidele was murdered? And now here she was leading these two filthy monstrosities.
Or was she?
I tentatively found my feet following the trio in through the doors.
‘Keep away, brother!’ warned a pilgrim grabbing my arm. ‘If they so much as look at you you’ll become like them!’
But I followed anyway.
Inside the church pilgrims were pushing their bodies against the walls to get as far away as they could as the two monsters and their doomed young helper advanced slowly up the central passage wailing as they went. I followed at a distance matching them step by step aware I was being watched by dozens of pairs of terrified eyes. We passed the quire stalls and the central crossing, then up the steps by the quire altar and on into the chancel itself. Once through the chancel screen and inside the now deserted chancel, the leading leper threw off her mask, turned her head towards me - and gurneyed.
‘Unclean!’ cried Mother Han giving one last doleful clunk of her bell.
She then shook her considerable bulk and a whole cascade of goodies flooded onto the chancel tiles to the astonishment of Hamo who had by now emerged from his hidey-hole beneath the shrine to see what the fuss was about.
‘That’s how you smuggle food into a sanctuary, brother,’ Mother Han snarled at me. ‘And don’t think I won’t be looking for payment neither.’
I was too dumbfounded to reply. But that wasn’t the end of it. The second leper now threw off her mask too - and yes, it was Cathrin. Seeing her, Hamo rushed into his wife’s arms and they embraced with an unashamed - and, quite frankly, thoroughly immodest - show of affection so that I had to look away. Lord alone knows what the blessed martyr must have made of this brazen display of carnal affection being conducted only inches before his holy nose. But then, I reflected, it probably made a welcome change from the unending stream of petitions for financial assistance and cures of the pox. Mother Han smiled benignly at the couple before snorting at me and then disappearing down the chancel steps closely followed by her child helper.