The Sanctuary Seeker

The Sanctuary Seeker

by

BERNARD KNIGHT!

Professor Bernard Knight, CBE, became a Home Office pathologist in 1965 and was appointed Professor of Forensic Pathology, University of Wales College of Medicine, in 1980. He is the author of twelve novels, a biography and numerous popular and academic non-fiction books. The Sanctuary Seeker is the first novel in the Crowner John series.

Also by Bernard Knight in the

Crowner John Series

The Sanctuary Seeker

The Poisoned Chalice

Crowner’s Quest

The Awful Secret

The Tinner’s Corpse

The Grim Reaper

Fear in the Forest

The Witch Hunter

visit the author’s website at

http:mysite.freeserve.combernard_knight POCKET BOOKS

LONDON-SYDNEY- NEW YORKŚTORONTO

First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 1998

This edition first published by Pocket Books, 2004

A imprint of Simon Schuster UK Ltd

A Viacom Company

Copyright Š Bernard Knight,

1998

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention No reproduction without permission

Ž and Š 1997 Simon Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Pocket Books Design is a registered trademark of Simon Schuster Inc.

The right of Bernard Knight to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 7434 9205 6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Author’s Note

Any attempt to give modern English dialogue an ‘olde worlde’ flavour in historical novels is as inaccurate as it is futile. In the time and place of this story, late twelfth-century Devon, most people would have spoken early Middle English, unintelligible to us at the present time. Many others would speak western Welsh, later called Cornish, and the ruling classes would have spoken Norman French. The language of the Church and virtually all official writing was Latin.

Exeter Cathedral, as described in these pages, is not the same building as can be seen today, with the exception of the two massive towers, which were there in Crowner John’s time.

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

Glossary

ABJURER

A criminal who sought sanctuary in a church and elected to ‘abjure’ by confessing his sin to the coroner and leaving the realm of England for ever, to avoid being hanged.

ACRE

City on the north coast of Palestine, where Richard the Lionheart landed in June 1191 during the Third Crusade. A two-year siege by other crusaders had failed to dislodge the Saracens, but Richard succeeded within a month, much to the chagrin of his French and German allies.

AMERCE

To impose a financial penalty (fine) on a person or village. The coroner (q.v.) would not collect it straight away, but record the amercement on his parchment rolls to present to the King’s justices when they came; they would confirm or cancel the fine.

ARCHDEACON

A senior clergyman, responsible for the administration of areas within a diocese. Bishops in Norman times were rarely resident and their archdeacons ran affairs for them. In the diocese of Devon and Cornwall, there were three Archdeacons, one responsible for Exeter.

ASSART

A new piece of arable land cut from the forest, to enlarge the holdings of a village.

BAILIFF

Overseer of a manor or estate, directing the farming and other outside work. A steward or seneschal (q.v.) might be above him in a large establishment; he would have reeves working under him.

BALDRIC

A diagonal strap over the right shoulder of a Norman warrior to suspend his sword scabbard on the left hip.

CANON

A member of the cathedral chapter (see Prebendary).

BURGAGE

A town property, usually a house on a plot, occupied by a burgess.

BURGESS

A freeman of substance in a town, usually a merchant or craftsman. A group of burgesses ran the town administration and elected the portreeves or later a mayor.

CAPUCIN

Medieval headgear, consisting of a long length of cloth wound round the head rather like a turban, the free end hanging down to one shoulder.

The administrative body of a cathedral, composed of the canons (or prebendaries) and the senior clergy.

They met in the chapter house, usually attached to the cathedral. The name derived from the reading of a chapter of the gospels before each meeting.

CONSISTORY COURTS

The ecclesiastical courts, which had the right to try clerics, rather than the secular courts. Anyone who could read and write could claim to be tried by this court, as literacy was virtually confined to the clergy.

CONSTABLE

Has many meanings, but in the twelfth-century context, a senior military commander, often the custodian of a castle, alternatively called a castellan.

CORONER

Senior law officer in a county, after the sheriff, first officially appointed in September 1194, though there is a mention of a coroner in Saxon times. The name derives from the Latin custos placitorum coronae, meaning Keeper of the Pleas of the Crown, as he recorded all crimes and legal events for the King’s justices.

CROFT

A small area of land around a village house (toft), for vegetables and a few livestock, used by the occupier (cottar), who was either a freeman or a bondsman (villein or serf).

CUIRASS

A breastplate or short tunic, originally of thick leather but later of metal, to protect the chest in combat.

DEODAND

Literally ‘a gift from God’, it was the forfeiture of anything that had caused a death, such a sword, a cart or even a mill-wheel. It was confiscated by the coroner for the King, or sometimes given as compensation to the victim’s family.

EYRE

A meeting of the King’s judges to decide legal cases; the General Eyre was introduced by Henry’ II to bring justice to the people by the judges moving from county to county to try cases. Later these became the Assizes (‘sittings’) and in modern times, the Crown Courts.

HAUBERK (OR BYRNIE)

A chain-mail tunic to armour the wearer from neck to knees; often had a hood extension (aventail) to reach under the helmet and sleeves to the elbow.

HONOUR

A holding of land from the King, Baron or Church. It might be a large estate or a single manor. A manor might be one village or several, under the same lord.

Some large villages were split between manors. The administration of a manor was run by a steward and one or more bailiffs, under whom were the manor reeves (q.v.)

JURY

Unlike modern juries, the medieval jury were witnesses, local people who were obliged to gather to tell what they knew of a crime or dispute. The coroner’s jury was supposed to be all men over twelve years of age from the four nearest villages, though this was often a practical impossibility.

JUSTICIAR

The chief minister in Norman times, a great noble or churchman appointed by the king. In the reign of Richard I, there were several justiciars, the most effective being Hubert Walter, who was Richard’s military secondin-command in Palestine before returning home during the king’s imprisonment in Austria to help raise his ransom. Richard made him Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar, and he virtually ruled the country after Richard’s permanent departure from England only two months after returning from captivity.

MANOR REEVE

A foreman appointed in each village by the lord of a manor to oversee the daily routine. He would allot the farming work to the freemen and serfs and, though illiterate, by means of memory and tally-sticks (marks cut on sticks to check numbers), he would keep a record of crop rotation, harvest yields and tithes,
etc.

MURDRUM FINE

A fine or amercement (q.v.) levied on a village by the coroner when a person is found slain and the locals cannot ‘present Englishry’, thus raising the presumption that they had murdered a Norman.

ORDEAL

An ancient ritual, abolished by the Vatican in 1215, where suspects were subjected to painful or potentially fatal ordeals, such as walking across nine red-hot ploughshares, carrying a red-hot iron bar nine paces, picking a stone from a barrel of boiling water or molten lead, licking white-hot iron,
etc.
If they suffered no injury, they were judged innocent; another ordeal was to be thrown bound into deep water - if they floated they were guilty, if they sank, innocent!

OUTLAW

Literally, anyone outside the law, usually an escaped criminal or a fugitive. They often lurked in the forests and any person was entitled to kill them on sight to collect a bounty, as they were ‘as the wolf’s head’.

OUTREMER

The four Christian kingdoms in the Levant at the time of the Crusades, including the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

PHTHISIS

Tuberculosis.

PORTREEVE

One of the senior officials in a town, elected by the other burgesses. There were usually two portreeves, later superseded by a mayor. The first mayor in Exeter took office in 1208.

PREBENDARY

A canon of a cathedral. A priest who is granted a prebend, the income of a church in the diocese to support him. Many canons employed a vicar to look after their parish, while they stayed in the cathedral.

PRECENTOR

A senior cleric in a cathedral, responsible for organising the religious services, singing,
etc.

PRESENTMENT OF ENGLISHRY

Following the 1066 Conquest, many Normans were killed by aggrieved locals, so the law decreed that anyone found dead was Norman and the locals punished by a murdrum fine (q.v.) unless they could prove the deceased was English (or Welsh). The presentment of Englishry by relatives of murdered people continued for several hundred years, as even though it became meaningless it was good source of revenue.

SANCTUARY

An ancient religious offer of mercy, where a fugitive from pursuit or a gaol-breaker could claim forty days immunity from the law if he reached a church or even the precincts of a church. This was not available for crimes of sacrilege.

SENESCHAL

The senior steward or head of the staff of a great household.

SHERIFF

A ‘shire-reeve’, the King’s representative in a county, responsible for law and order and the collection of royal taxes.

TITHE

A tenth part of the harvest, demanded by the church.

UNDERCROFT

The ground floor of a fortified building. The entrance to the rest of the building was on the floor above, which had no communication with the undercroft. Removable wooden steps prevented attackers from being able to storm the main door.

A cknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following for historical advice, though reserving the blame for any misapprehensions about the complexities of life and law in twelfth century Devon; Mrs Angela Doughty, Exeter Cathedral Archivist; the staff of Devon Record Office and of Exeter Central Library; Mr Stuart Blaylock, Exeter Archaeology; Rev Canon Mawson, Exeter Cathedral; Mr Thomas Watkin, Cardiff Law School, University of Wales; Professor Nicholas Orme, University of Exeter; and to Clare Ledingham, Editorial Director at Simon Schuster, for her unfailing interest and support.

In which Crowner John rides to Widecombe The three riders plodded miserably along the rutted track. The hoofs of their animals splashed in the muddy water that trickled down to meet the Webburn river, a mile away. Leading the trio, Crowner John cursed as he felt the rain beginning to trickle from the edge of his leather hood into the neckband of his cloak. Even the hardships he had endured during the Crusades or the Irish campaigns had failed to immunise him against the purgatory of a wet autumn in the West Country.

Close behind his great grey stallion came a brown mare, carrying the gaunt shape of the coroner’s bodyguard, his ginger hair wrapped turban-wise in an oat-sack that dripped water down his frayed leather cuirass. ‘I thought November was for fog on these bloody moors, not this endless rain,’ he grumbled.