The Grim Reaper Page 15

  ‘It were better that you died soon, even by fire or water, if you can achieve a state of grace, than linger on in sin and spend eternity in Satan’s hellfire.’ Adam shouted after him.

  The words echoed in de Capra’s ears as he hurried, sobbing, along the road, in a far worse state of mind than when he had gone to find help and absolution.

  De Wolfe spent the rest of the afternoon going over many of the coroner’s rolls that were to be presented to the Justices in Eyre the following week. Thomas had been working indefatigably to complete extra copies and was reading out lists of names and verdicts to his master in the upper room of the gatehouse. Gwyn, bored by the proceedings, had gone to the guardroom below for a gossip and a jar of cider with Gabriel. He came back with the news that a welcoming cavalcade was being organised for Monday to meet the judicial procession as it came along the road from Honiton. ‘You are expected to be on it, of course,’ he concluded, ‘not us lesser fish, but Ralph Morin, the Portreeves and the archdeacons. Some of the other burgesses, the guild masters and a few canons will be there too. Gabriel has to organise a score of men-at-arms as escort, he says.’

  As coroner, John had expected to be among those who formed a reception party for the Justices in Eyre, but this seemed too much. ‘Damned mummery, I call it,’ he growled. ‘We only went as far as the West Gate to receive the Chief Justiciar when he came last year, not go flouncing halfway to Dorchester to meet a handful of working judges. It’s that bloody sheriff, trying to impress them so that they don’t notice his embezzlements – a wonder he doesn’t have a troupe of musicians and tumblers prancing in front of us!’

  Gwyn grinned and Thomas went back to his pen and parchment. De Wolfe pulled out the scrap of parchment they had found on Aaron’s body and scowled at it for a long moment, as if he could read some secret message among the marks. Thomas had carefully spelled out each word, so that with the rudimentary knowledge he had acquired about the alphabet, John could now follow the sense of the biblical text. His lips slowly and silently re-formed the words, but he was still no wiser as to the author. Impatiently, he dropped it on to the table.

  ‘Thomas, look at that writing again, will you?’

  The clerk put down his quill obediently and leaned across the trestle to pick up the text.

  ‘I know I’ve asked you this before but d’you think there’s any prospect of matching it with the writer’s hand?’

  The pinched, sad face stared at it for a moment. Then the bright, bird-like eyes swivelled to the coroner. ‘I suspect he has thought of that himself, Crowner, and deliberately disguised his penmanship.’ He held up the torn scrap so that it faced his master and pointed out the words with a thin forefinger. ‘See? The letters slope mainly backwards. Some scribes write like that, but they are constant in their leaning. These vary from word to word – some are even upright and, in a couple of places, he has forgotten himself and they angle slightly forward.’

  Gwyn, interested in spite of his professed disdain of clerks and literacy, ambled across to look over Thomas’s head at the parchment. ‘The bottom of all those marks are not on the same level, not straight, like the way you do them,’ he observed.

  ‘That’s another sign that the writer is disguising them. He might have done this with his left hand, instead of the usual right.’

  John grunted at these expert opinions. He had previously – and secretly – compared the writing with Thomas’s own hand on the many documents in the office and, to his relief, had found them totally unlike. Yet now his clerk was proving that there were ways of disguising the style of a person’s script – but surely that in itself must be an indication that Thomas could not have written it. Or was it some double bluff?

  ‘So you think it’s useless trying to match this with anyone we might suspect?’ he asked.

  ‘I see no chance of success, Crowner. The colour of the ink is ordinary black and the parchment might have been torn from anywhere.’

  That reminded de Wolfe of Matilda’s comments: ‘My wife pointed out that the text is copied from a Vulgate. He could have torn out the appropriate page instead to avoid any risk of his handwriting being recognised.’

  Thomas shuddered and crossed himself at the thought of such desecration, both religious and literary. ‘Even a murderous priest would baulk at defacing his Bible! And, of course, if the book was later found with the significant pages missing, it would be disaster for him,’ he added shrewdly.

  De Wolfe made a few more throat noises as he considered the seemingly hopeless task before him. ‘You’d better come with me to this Chapter meeting in the cathedral tomorrow, in case I need any advice about texts or gospels and the like. Late in the morning, after Terce, right?’

  Thomas almost smiled at the prospect of being admitted to the daily meeting of the canons, when cathedral business was discussed. Anything that got him into a religious building and among priests was balm to his injured soul.

  While the little clerk was savouring the prospect of infiltrating the cathedral establishment, John de Wolfe had more secular prospects on his mind. He stood up and buckled on his heavy leather belt, with his long dagger at the back. ‘I’ve had enough of this place. I’m going to give my old hound a bit of exercise.’

  As he left, Gwyn had a fair notion of where Brutus would be within the next hour.

  As if to make up for lost time, John spent another energetic hour in the little cubicle in the loft of the Bush Inn, until Nesta declared that not only her strength but her business would wither away if she stayed any longer. She left him on the big bed while she made herself respectable then climbed down to supervise the cook-maid and the two serving-girls, as the early-evening clientele often wanted food to go with their ale and cider.

  After de Wolfe’s two Herculean efforts that day, she decided he needed a substantial meal to replenish his strength and by the time he ambled down the ladder a thick trencher, dripping with gravy, was ready for him at his favourite table near the hearth. A large boiled pig’s knuckle sat in the centre and a platter of cabbage, onions and turnip lay next to it. A small loaf, complete with a pewter pot of butter, rounded off the meal, which de Wolfe washed down with a quart of rough, turbid cider.

  Nesta was bustling about, trying to conceal the radiance of a woman well satisfied with the day’s events. Her rounded figure was shown off by her tight-waisted green kirtle, laced down the back; her linen apron emphasised, rather than concealed, her prominent bosom. John looked up frequently from his meal to watch her joke with the regular customers, her heart-shaped face and high forehead perfectly balanced by the small, turned-up nose and smiling lips.

  Even the memory of Hilda, beyond his reach in Dawlish, faded when he looked at Nesta, and he scowled at the thought that he might be in love. He cursed himself for a middle-aged fool – how could a hardened, cynical old campaigner, married for too many years to a cold, unloving battleaxe like Matilda, feel like a callow youth? If he wasn’t careful, he would be writing poetry next and bringing her flowers!

  He tried to tell himself that it was the prospect of two sessions each day in the French bed that made him so happy, but glance across the room at the sweet-natured woman who had an easy word for everyone and no guile or spite to dispense, told him he wanted to be with her always, bed or no bed.

  Feeling at peace with the world, he dropped his stripped knuckle-bone on to the rushes under the table, where Brutus was patiently waiting for it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In which Crowner John goes to St Mary Arches

  Next morning, de Wolfe felt as if time was replaying itself from the previous Tuesday, as a thunderous knocking on the front door woke him soon after dawn. This time he was alone on the wide pallet in the solar: the evening before Matilda had announced to Mary that after her devotions in St Olave’s she would spend the night with her cousin in Fore Street – an abdication for which John was profoundly thankful.

  Mary had answered the door before he could struggle into his tunic and shoes
and get down the stairs from the solar. When he reached the vestibule, he found that, instead of the expected Gwyn, the callers were Gabriel from the castle, with Osric the constable lurking behind him. Bleary-eyed from sleep and his heavy night at the Bush, the coroner waited for the sergeant to explain himself.

  ‘We’ve got another, Crowner! At least, we think we have.’

  John glowered at him as he pushed his brain into full working order. With his black locks tousled from bed, and a week’s growth of dark stubble on his cadaverous face, he looked even more menacing than usual. ‘Got what? A nd where’s Gwyn?’ he demanded sourly.

  ‘Hasn’t appeared yet – he was probably on the ale at St Sidwell’s last night,’ replied Gabriel. ‘A dead priest is what we’ve got. At St Mary Arches.’

  De Wolfe sat down heavily on the vestibule bench, where he usually changed his footwear. ‘A priest? Murdered?’

  The lanky Osric chimed in nervously, ‘Gabriel thinks so – but I wonder if he didn’t kill himself, in remorse for the other slayings.’

  De Wolfe glared up at them. ‘Well, which is it? A murder or a felo de se?’

  The sergeant of the guard threw the town constable a withering look. ‘God’s bones, man of course it’s a bloody murder!’ He appealed to de Wolfe: ‘Come and look for yourself, Crowner.’

  John pulled on a pair of boots and threw his worn wolfskin over his shoulders. As they opened the big oak door, he snapped a request to his maid-servant, who was standing in the entrance to the passageway: ‘Mary, slip down to Canons’ Row and tell Thomas to get himself up to St Mary Arches as quick as he can. If Gabriel’s right, we might need his reading and biblical skills.’

  A few minutes later, after pushing through the early morning crowd of traders and their customers that thronged the narrow high street, Osric and the sergeant led the coroner up a lane that turned off Fore Street just before St Olave’s. A few yards up on the right was the church that gave the narrow street its name. St Mary Arches was bigger and wealthier than many of its fellows in Exeter, as although Bretayne was but a few hundred yards away, it lay in a district of craftsmen and merchants. Even so, it was still a simple, rectangular building, albeit in new stone with a sturdy tower at the street end. A handful of people clustered around the open twin doors, kept out of the church by the other constable, Theobald, who was as fat as Osric was stringy.

  The three men hurried up the steps and went through a round Norman arch into an empty nave. High clerestory window openings gave a good light, revealing walls painted with scenes from the scriptures, though not of the hell-fire variety depicted down at St Mary Steps. At the other end, another round arch led into a short chancel, two steps up from the paved floor of the nave. A large gilded wooden cross stood above a carved rood screen and, beyond, the altar, of solid Dartmoor slate, was covered with a lacy white cloth. Paintings of Christ and the church’s patron saint, Mary, hung on each side of the altar, which boasted a silver cross and candlesticks.

  The only thing that disturbed the symmetry was a body sprawled across the chancel steps. The legs pointed towards the altar, the arms were outspread and the head tilted down, the shaven tonsure gleaming in the morning light.

  ‘There he is, Crowner, just as the first parishioner attending for Prime found him,’ said Gabriel, his voice echoing in the empty nave.

  Taking the lead now, de Wolfe hurried up the church, his boots slapping on the sandstone floor. A few yards from the chancel steps, he stopped abruptly. ‘What the hell is his face in?’ he exclaimed irreverently.

  ‘That’s why I reckon he drowned hisself,’ claimed Osric.

  As he moved up to the body, de Wolfe saw that the priest, dressed in a white linen alb, lay with his face in a shallow copper pan, which sat on the floor below the lower step. Stooping down, he could see that it was half full of a red fluid, which looked like diluted blood, submerging his mouth and nose.

  ‘If it’s a suicide, he was damned clever to have hit himself on the head first.’ snapped Gabriel, scowling at the city constable.

  Following the sergeant’s pointing finger, de Wolfe saw that towards the back of the head, in the thick brown hair that surrounded the shaven patch, was a mat of drying blood.

  ‘Could that blood in the dish have drained from that?’ quavered Osric, his suicide theory demolished.

  De Wolfe dipped a finger in the pan and held it to his nose. ‘It’s not blood, it’s wine!’ He got to his feet and stood with his hands on his hips, hunched over the bizarre scene. ‘Drowned in wine, by Christ! This surely has to be unique!’

  Gabriel looked at him. ‘Can you drown in a pan? There’s no more than a couple of quarts in that.’

  ‘Why not? We were built to breathe air, not Anjou red or whatever it is! If the nose and mouth are covered, that’s good enough.’ De Wolfe turned and looked back down the nave, to where a clutch of curious faces was peering in, past Theobald, the rotund constable. ‘Do we know who he is? Which man found him?’

  Osric yelled to his colleague, oblivious of the sacred surroundings, and Theobald marched an elderly man down towards them. He was well dressed in a good serge tunic, over which was draped a dark red velvet cloak. A tight-fitting leather helmet was tied with tapes under his chin. His large grey moustache failed to hide the anxious look on his lined face. ‘Crowner,’ he said, ‘we met briefly at one of those guild banquets a month or so past, though you’ll hardly remember me. I am William de Stanlinche, a silversmith from this street.’ He tried to avert his eyes from the corpse on the steps.

  ‘Who is this unfortunate cleric?’ grated de Wolfe.

  ‘Our deputy priest, poor Arnulf de Mowbray. I can hardly believe that this is happening, Crowner.’ The silversmith seemed distraught at the loss of his vicar.

  ‘And you found him this morning?’

  ‘I was first here, almost an hour ago. I come to Prime several times a week before I go to my workshop. He was lying there, just as you see him. I touched his head and hand to make sure he was dead and he was cold. Then I ran to knock at all the doors in the lane, as we must, and someone went off to find the constable.’

  ‘Do we know when he was last seen alive?’

  William de Stanlinche nodded and pointed quaveringly at the crowd gawping at the door. ‘Several of them were at Matins at midnight. Arnulf held the service for about the usual half-hour.’

  ‘Why did you say “deputy” priest?’

  William turned his back on the corpse and spoke with apparent relief about something different.

  ‘Father Simon Hoxtone is our regular priest, but he’s been laid low with phthisis these past nine months – sick unto death, I fear. We have had several priests sent here in his place, mostly vicars loaned from the cathedral. The last was Arnulf, who came about three months ago.’

  Something in his voice made John suspicious. ‘Was there something about him I should know?’

  The elderly man shuffled awkwardly. ‘He was not a great success, Crowner. I fear he had a great partiality for ale and wine. Sometimes he was incapable of holding the Mass or even taking confession, because of his disability.’

  He hesitated, and John knew there was something more. ‘Was it only the drink?’ he demanded.

  William cleared his throat uneasily. ‘I’m afraid he was seen more than once with loose women when he was in his cups. Some parishioners were outraged, especially some of the wives. It was reported to the Archdeacon, and some other cleric was to have taken his place as soon as they found someone more suitable.’ He paused and gave an embarrassed cough. ‘De Mowbray seems to have been shunted from place to place, as every position he held soon became untenable.’

  John gave one of his throat rumbles. Arnulf de Mowbray was obviously a burden to every church that was saddled with him, but he could hardly imagine John de Alençon ridding himself of even such a troublesome priest in such a drastic fashion as this!

  He dismissed William with a curt word of thanks and told Osric to hold any others outside who h
ad been present at Matins or who had come to attend Prime. He was just going to curse Gwyn for not being on hand, when his lumbering officer burst through the church entrance with Thomas de Peyne in tow. Pushing aside the crowd at the door, he ambled down the nave with the clerk trying to keep up with him.

  ‘I went up to Rougemont when the gates opened, but they told me you were down here with Gabriel,’ he boomed, oblivious of his surroundings. When he reached the group at the chancel steps, he stared with interest at the dead priest. ‘Got another, have we? Who’s it this time?’

  The sergeant gave him a quick summary while Thomas bobbed his knee to the altar, then began crossing himself spasmodically beside the corpse, muttering to himself.

  ‘Never heard of the Eucharist wine being dispensed in a wash-bowl before!’ chortled Gwyn irreverently, earning a poisonous glance from the devout Thomas.

  De Wolfe ignored his officer’s sacrilege and dropped to a crouch to look again more closely at the head of the corpse. ‘I wonder what was used to strike him? Like the other two, there’s no pattern of any particular weapon.’

  Gwyn bent over and prodded the bloody pad at the back of the man’s head. ‘Must have been something round or flat, as the skin is split in a star-shape. Could have been almost anything.’

  De Wolfe gazed at what he could see of the face above the few inches of wine in the copper pan. ‘His features are reddened, but he’s tipped downwards, across these steps, so the blood would sink there anyway. We’d better get him up, I suppose.’

  He rose to his feet and motioned to Gwyn to lift the dead man on to his back. Just as the Cornishman took a grip beneath the armpits, the coroner suddenly stopped him with a gesture. ‘Wait! What’s this on the stone alongside him?’

  Gwyn released his hold and looked to where de Wolfe was pointing, at the lower step, which was almost obscured by the corpse’s shoulder. He saw an irregular disc of dried wax, about half the size of his palm. ‘There’s some marks scratched on it,’ he grunted.