The Awful Secret Page 10

  ‘Why this sudden interest in theology, Crowner John?’ he mocked gently. ‘I’ve never taken you for a man who has much time for the Almighty, more’s the pity!’

  De Wolfe grinned sheepishly. It was true that his devotions were reluctant and perfunctory – he went to Mass occasionally, but only on High Feasts or when Matilda nagged him to accompany her to some dreary service at St Olave’s. ‘It was meeting this old Crusading companion again, who now belongs to the Templar establishment in Paris. Some of the things he mentioned intrigued me, that’s all. The Order is said by some to have a rather different view of Christianity from the rest of us – is that true?’

  He was fishing for information without wanting to give anything away, a difficult task with someone as astute as John de Alençon – but the cleric was happy to discourse on anything touching the Faith. ‘I agree with you that their organisation is somewhat peculiar,’ said the archdeacon. ‘Though they are under the direct protection of the Holy Father in Rome, many in the Church have for long been uneasy with the favoured status of the Templars.’

  ‘Why is this?’ prompted de Wolfe.

  ‘They are immune from orders by even the highest bishops, only bowing their knee to the Pope. They recruit not only devout men, especially rich ones with wealth or land to donate, but also attract excommunicate knights and persons with unorthodox views of religion,’ he said disapprovingly.

  At this the coroner’s heavy eyebrows lifted. ‘I have heard that some accuse the Templars of heresy – but how can that be, in a such a devout body of men so favoured by Rome and patronised by St Bernard?’

  The grey-haired priest looked shrewdly over the rim of his glass at his friend. ‘This is a strange conversation for you, John. You are usually full of tales about murdered men and mutilated corpses. Why this sudden interest in the Templars?’

  De Wolfe sighed – he seemed to be transparent to his old friend.

  ‘This man seems to have fallen out with his Order. I can say no more, but I wondered if his dispute with them is real, or whether he has some ailment of the mind that convinces him he is persecuted.’

  The archdeacon looked puzzled. ‘To fall out with the Templars would be very unusual – their brothers are bound to them for life. And it would be a very grave situation to fall foul of them as they are not known for their tolerance and forbearance with those who cross them.’

  ‘Do they have any dark secrets that they would not wish spread abroad?’

  ‘Rumours abound, John, but most are probably idle tittle-tattle. They have been accused of many things over the years.’

  ‘Such as?’ persisted the coroner.

  ‘Idolatry, including worshipping a disembodied head named Baphomet – and even the denial of the crucifixion of Our Lord and spitting on the True Cross.’ He shuddered and crossed himself as he uttered the words, reminding de Wolfe of his own clerk. ‘But I think these must be foul slanders about an Order so favoured by Rome.’

  John sensed that he was getting on to ground that might prove harmful to de Ridefort, if the established Church had some antipathy to the Order of the Temple. He let the conversation slide into less dangerous topics, though he knew that the priest was still intrigued by his interest.

  He spent an hour with de Alençon and when the wine flask was empty, the archdeacon walked him to the door of his narrow house. As they parted, the cleric’s last remark proved that he had not forgotten their earlier discussion.

  ‘Advise your friend, John, that he had better keep a good watch over his shoulder, if he has become at cross-purposes with the Poor Knights of Christ. They possess a very long arm indeed!’

  When he arrived near his own house, de Wolfe saw Gwyn hovering in Martin’s Lane, talking to Andrew the farrier as he hammered a shoe on to a roan gelding. The Cornishman looked scruffier than usual, his tattered thick leather jerkin more frayed than ever and his serge breeches crumpled above his muddy boots. The only acceptable part of his outfit was the large scabbard that contained his broadsword, hanging from the diagonal baldric strap over his right shoulder.

  ‘Have you been at war while my back was turned?’ demanded the coroner as he approached his officer, whose flaming ginger hair and beard were as unkempt and tangled as if he had been through six blackthorn hedges.

  Gwyn grinned amiably and patted the hilt of his sword. ‘There was a riot down in the Shambles just now – you can barely have missed it if you walked up from the Bush.’

  ‘Any work for us there? What was it all about?’ demanded his master.

  ‘One dead, two badly wounded,’ replied Gwyn. ‘One I injured myself, after he had killed the other fellow.’

  De Wolfe was already striding off towards the meat market, which was on the other side of the cathedral Close. ‘Come on, man, tell me about it as we go.’

  ‘A group of men came into the city, driving a score of pigs. They set up a booth on Bell Hill, half-way up Southgate Street, and began killing a few hogs, offering the joints at a price lower than the Exeter traders’.’

  ‘They must have been fools – or desperate!’ said de Wolfe, as they hurried along. ‘It’s not even a market day! The local butchers wouldn’t stand for that.’

  ‘They didn’t – not for more than a few minutes. They started shouting at them, then overturning tables. The pigs were running wild, the traders were fighting and the customers were screaming in panic.’

  ‘What about the portreeves and burgesses? Where were they with their bailiffs?’

  ‘They soon arrived and it developed into a free-for-all. Then the cudgels came out and the knives, even a couple of old swords. It was bloody chaos!’

  They hurried through Bear Lane and out into South Gate Street where the Serge Market lay slightly downhill from the Shambles, in the dip before the road rose again to the gate. There were plenty of people milling around, but no obvious fighting. ‘It’s gone quiet now,’ exclaimed Gwyn, in a disappointed tone. ‘All hell was let loose here half an hour ago.’

  John de Wolfe pushed past a crowd of onlookers near an overturned stall to get to the middle of the road. He was carrying no sword, but kept a hand on the hilt of his dagger in case there was more trouble. Above the hubbub of chatter and complaint, he could hear a familiar voice shouting a few yards away. ‘Gabriel! What’s going on?’ he yelled, pushing through the crowd to reach the sergeant of the castle guard, who was shoving at the crowd with four other men-at-arms, clearing a space around some bodies on the fouled ground.

  When John broke through, with Gwyn at his shoulder, he thought at first that there had been a massacre, as the mud was running with blood. ‘It’s not all from your customer, Crowner!’ the sergeant reassured him, his lined old face creasing into a grin. ‘Most of this is swine’s blood – though these human swine here have added a few pints!’

  De Wolfe cursed as two terrified black pigs crashed against his legs, before careering off into the throng. He stepped into the squelching pink mud and looked down at a still corpse, then at two men groaning on the ground. One had blood pouring from a large gash in his scalp, the other was doubled up in pain, clutching his belly. From between his fingers, oozed an ominous dark red clot.

  ‘The dead ’un is a meat-hawker from Milk Street,’ announced Gabriel. ‘These other two are from the gang from the countryside.’

  Gwyn bent over the man with the stomach wound. ‘I fixed this bastard,’ he said gruffly. ‘He was one who ran through the Exeter man.’

  Gabriel and his men were gradually restoring order, pushing back the gawping crowd and getting some to restore the fallen booths. Here there was a disordered mixture of serge and worsted rolls, lamb and pork – much had ended up on the ground and urchins and dogs were playing with the meat. A few surreptitious looters were picking up joints and offal, trying to wipe away some of the mud before making off with their booty.

  ‘Where are the rest of the intruders?’ snapped de Wolfe.

  ‘I’ve got two of them pinioned over there, Crowner,’ an
swered Gabriel, motioning towards the nearest house. ‘The others have made a run for it. They’re far beyond the gate by now.’

  John looked down at the dead and injured. ‘Better get the corpse taken to his home, if he’s a local.’

  Gwyn nodded. ‘What about these other two?’

  De Wolfe looked at the head wound on the first man. His hair was matted with blood, but the bleeding seemed to be slowing from the gash. He was sitting up, groaning, but conscious. ‘This one will live, unless the wound suppurates later. Gabriel, take him to the gaol down there at the South Gate. Illegal trading is a city problem, not one that concerns the king.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you admit that, for once, John.’

  Turning, de Wolfe saw the sheriff standing behind him, elegant in a short brown mantle over his long green tunic. He wore a close-fitting helmet of brown felt, tied under the chin, and his shoes were in the latest fashion, with long curled points at the toes.

  De Wolfe pointed to the cadaver then moved his finger to the other man. ‘These are within my jurisdiction, Richard.’

  ‘But only one is dead, Coroner,’ said de Revelle sarcastically.

  ‘The other has a mortal wound,’ stated de Wolfe bluntly. After a score of years on many battlefields, he considered himself an authority on violent injuries. ‘He’s losing blood clots from his belly, so he’ll not last long. My officer put a sword into his vitals as he was killing this Exeter man.’

  The victim about whom they were talking had slumped sideways and his face had taken on an ashen hue. A priest, a young vicar-choral from the cathedral, had pushed through the crowd and went to crouch by his side, cradling the dying man’s head on his lap. He pressed the small cross from a chain around his neck against the victim’s forehead and muttered a Latin absolution into now deaf ears.

  ‘No point in trying to take this one to the gaol, Crowner,’ said Gabriel, ‘but I’ll get the corpse moved and clap these other three in the gatehouse.’

  ‘You’d better get an apothecary to look at his wound. We don’t want him dying on us before he’s hanged,’ boomed a new voice. This came from a large warrior, with a forked grey beard, wearing a mailed hauberk and a round iron helmet. Ralph Morin, the castle constable, had come down with the sheriff and a dozen more soldiers to quell the disturbance. He took over from his sergeant and ordered the men-at-arms to get rid of the crowd. Grumbling and swearing, they dispersed gradually and the stalls were hoisted back into their places for trading to start again.

  As the corpse was being carried away on a wattle hurdle, de Wolfe and his brother-in-law began walking back to the high street, Ralph Morin and Gwyn at either side. ‘I can’t see why they risk coming into the city, these out-of-town traders,’ said the sheriff testily. ‘They can set up their stalls a few hundredpaces away outside the walls and no one can deny them.’

  ‘The portreeves and the burgesses are rightly strict about the monopoly within the city for the freemen. They pay their taxes and have a right to expect the best of the trading,’ said Ralph Morin. ‘If every free cottar and runaway could come in and sell at a lower price because they pay no dues, the city would be ruined in no time.’

  ‘I’ll have to hold an inquest on those two in the morning,’ grumbled de Wolfe. ‘For the other man will be dead long before then.’

  ‘I’ll hang the other three scum for you, John,’ offered de Revelle. ‘The County Court is held tomorrow and I’ll delay it until after your inquest.’

  De Wolfe shook his head stubbornly. ‘Thank you, but no, Richard. If the killer lived, I would attach him for the next Eyre of Assize, but as he has no hope of surviving there’s no need. The remaining offence, unless the inquest finds otherwise, concerns trading, not killing, and the burgess court can deal with that. It’s not the business of either of us.’

  Richard de Revelle clicked his tongue to convey his exasperation with de Wolfe’s interpretation of the legal system but, on probation himself over the rebellion, he was unable to be as despotic as before.

  As they walked briskly in the chill March wind, Ralph Morin turned the conversation into a less controversial channel. ‘What about this problem up on the north coast? What are we doing about it?’

  ‘I’m sending Sergeant Gabriel up there with a few men to get a feel of the problem, if organised piracy is afoot,’ said de Revelle loftily.

  John felt exasperated that the sheriff had appropriated his suggestion as if it was his own, but managed to bite back any protest. ‘I intend setting off straight after the court tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘We can get much of the way before nightfall and on to Ilfracombe the next day.’

  ‘I thought it was Appledore you were interested in,’ objected the sheriff.

  ‘We are – and Bideford and, perhaps, Combe Martin. But I have to see this survivor again. He may have recalled something that would help to identify the attackers. He was too ill when we first saw him to be very helpful.’

  They fell silent for a while and soon were in the narrow main highway of the city. As they passed the Guildhall, two figures hurried out of the arched doorway of the new stone building and accosted them in the road. They were the two portreeves of Exeter, Hugh de Relaga and Henry Rifford. They had been elected by their fellow burgessess to lead the civic organisation of the city, especially commerce, as the markets and fairs, the wool and cloth trades made Exeter one of the most thriving English towns. Hugh de Relaga, de Wolfe’s partner in the wool enterprise, was a tubby, cheerful dandy, fond of good living and bright clothes. He was a complete contrast to Henry Rifford, a prosperous leather merchant but a serious, rather gloomy man above middle age. His beautiful daughter, Christina, had been brutally raped a few months ago, which had done little to improve his spirits.

  ‘Is it over? What damage has been done?’ demanded Rifford in agitation. The two men had been poring over municipal acccounts in a back room of the Guildhall and had only just been informed of the riot in Southgate Street.

  ‘Our clerk says a man is dead – is he a guildsman?’ asked de Relaga.

  Richard de Revelle took it upon himself to explain what had happened, never missing the chance to take credit for knowing everything and being the instrument of restoring order. Reassured, the portreeves calmed down, but decided to walk with their clerks to the Shambles and the Serge Market to show their concern to the citizens. ‘We must visit the dwelling of the dead man and ensure that his guild-master is informed so that support can be offered to the family,’ said de Relaga, with his typical concern for the more unfortunate of his townsfolk.

  As they parted, de Wolfe reminded them of their other legal responsibilities. ‘As the killer is dead, there will be no need to bring anyone before the king’s judges – but the three men in your gaol are your problem.’

  The sheriff could not resist having the last word. ‘I could try them for causing an affray in my County Court tomorrow – but if you want them for illegal trading, you’re welcome.’

  With that parting shot, they walked on the few yards until de Wolfe came to the opening for Martin’s Lane, leaving the others to continue on up to Rougemont. Giving a deep sigh, he pushed open his street door and prepared to meet the grim face of his wife when he told her that he would be leaving for another expedition to the north coast.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In which Crowner John holds an inquest

  In spite of his gloomy apprehensions, John found Matilda surprisingly tractable when he entered the hall. She had changed her garments again and wore a blue kirtle, which he knew was one of her best. He tried to open the conversation by telling her of the skirmish in Southgate Street, but she had no interest in that: her mind was on other things.

  ‘Did you settle that poor man in a decent lodging? Not that there’s anything decent about that low tavern.’ Her active resentment of Nesta had been held in check since her husband had been disabled after breaking his leg, but she was starting to throw the old barbs at him once again.

  ‘It’s the best
inn in the city – certainly better than sharing a room with sweaty pilgrims in Curre Street,’ he countered gruffly.

  ‘He should have stayed here. It’s warm, quiet and more suitable for a man of his station in life,’ said Matilda firmly.

  ‘He said he wanted to move to an inn. It was his choice.’

  ‘You did nothing to encourage him to take up our invitation, did you?’

  He glowered at her as he took his chair on the opposite side of the fire. ‘It may not be a very good idea to get too friendly with that particular man,’ he muttered. ‘If what he says is true, he’s playing a dangerous game, not only with the Templars but with the Church generally and Rome in particular.’

  Matilda made a dismissive gesture with a heavily ringed hand. ‘You’re just making excuses, John. I thought he was supposed to be a friend of yours.’

  ‘Hardly a friend, just an acquaintance from the past. I owe him no more than any other man.’ ‘Well, we can’t leave him to rot in that common hostelry, with half the scum of Devon around him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘At the very least he must come to sup with us tonight. I’ve told Mary to prepare a decent meal, if she’s capable of it for once – and to make it sufficient for an extra guest.’

  ‘You want him to eat here?’

  ‘Of course! We must make amends to him as you snubbed my offer to accommodate him under our roof. Send old Simon down to that tavern with a message for Sir Gilbert to come up here at dusk, to dine with us. I hope you still have some decent French wine in that chest of yours in the corner.’ She pointed to a dark recess of the hall, where her husband kept a stock of sealed stone flasks purchased from a wine importer in Topsham.

  He sat silently cursing the woman for interferingin his business: after hearing the archdeacon’s views, he had a gut feeling that no good would come of this unexpected appearance of Gilbert de Ridefort. But his inertia was a futile defence, as Matilda continued to glare at him until he rose reluctantly and went out to the yard to summon Simon.