A Plague of Heretics (Crowner John Mysteries) Read online

  Rugge returned to the tirade. ‘Even the bishop and his archdeacon are little help. They are too concerned with the trivial rituals of the cathedral and the finances of their treasury to bother with the cancer that is rotting the Holy Church in the shape of these heretics!’

  The coroner was not impressed by their fervent denials. ‘You were only too willing to murder those men on the wharf!’ he shouted back at them. ‘If I and other forces of law and order had not arrived in time, you would have hanged them out of hand! Is that the act of the Christians who you are so keen to defend? I thought that kindness and compassion was the code that they professed.’

  Reginald Rugge had a ready answer for him. ‘Like the compassion you Crusaders showed at Acre, when you and your king beheaded almost three thousand Saracen prisoners?’

  ‘That was an entirely different matter; that was war!’ retorted John, but he felt uneasy, as it was an episode that had shaken his respect for his hero, Richard Coeur de Lion. ‘And anyway, as Mohammedans, were they not the ultimate heretics in your eyes?’

  What promised to become a theological altercation conducted at the tops of their voices was interrupted by the sound of boots on the steps outside and calls for the gaoler. Stigand shuffled out through the gate and a moment later the two proctors’ bailiffs appeared, clutching their long staves. Herbert Gale also had a coil of thin rope in his other hand. Like his colleague William Blundus, he was not pleased to see the coroner and his officer.

  ‘These are our prisoners now, Sir John,’ grated the senior bailiff with reluctant deference to the coroner’s rank.

  ‘And you are welcome to them, for now,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘I suspect we may have the pleasure of their company here again, when the bishop decides to turn them over to the secular powers for sentencing.’

  He said this more for his own satisfaction than in any hope of it being true, for he knew that the Church liked defying the king as a matter of principle, especially as Bishop Marshal was a supporter of Prince John in the latter’s striving to depose his elder brother from the throne of England.

  He stood aside with Gwyn as Stigand unlocked the chains around the two cell gates and let the prisoners out into the passage. They watched as Blundus took the rope from Herbert Gale and tied one end around the wrists of the wretched monk and the other in a similar fashion to those of Rugge.

  ‘Come on, then, down to the Close with you!’ commanded Herbert Gale, grabbing the centre of the rope and tugging the two men out into the undercroft. With a smirk of triumph at the coroner, Alan de Bere followed, stumbling alongside his fellow prisoner. With William Blundus bringing up the rear, they climbed the steps to the inner ward and vanished.

  Gwyn spat contemptuously on the ground. ‘Did you see the wink that bastard Blundus gave them as he tied them with those knots that a newborn babe could undo? I’ll wager they’ll be on the loose again before the sun rises tomorrow!’

  At the dinner table John thought it politic not to mention to Matilda his meeting with Cecilia that morning, as it would only be asking for more sneers about his trying to inflict his lustful desires upon the fair lady. However, given what the physician’s wife had had to tell him, he wanted to know what Clement had been saying in the chapter house that morning.

  For once, Matilda was only too ready to talk. ‘It was a great success, thanks be to the doctor!’ she effused. ‘Some of the canons were most receptive, and Robert de Baggetor actually apologised for the leniency with which those blasphemers were treated.’

  Then she glared at him over her bowl of hare stew. ‘Your friend the archdeacon tried to play down the whole affair and came in for some criticism – and your name was bandied about, much to my shame!’

  He ignored this and asked, ‘Did your delegation actually go into the chapter meeting?’

  She shook her head sourly. ‘The archdeacon forbade it. He said that it was a private conclave of the cathedral. We had to stand outside in the cold and petition the canons as they came out.’

  De Wolfe speared a leg of hare with his eating-knife and added it to the broth in his pewter bowl. ‘And what part did our neighbour play in this enterprise?’ he asked in a neutral tone, not wanting to arouse any more of his wife’s antagonism.

  ‘He was our leader, rather than Father Julian,’ she said proudly. ‘He was most eloquent, polite and deferential to the higher churchmen, but still firm and persuasive. He emphasised that the population of the city were the soil from which the cathedral and other churches were nourished and it was only right that their voices were heard.’

  ‘A courageous man,’ observed John dryly. ‘If he dared to voice opinions like that to most of the barons or the king’s court, they would have had him hanged for sedition and fomenting revolution!’

  Matilda failed to recognise his irony and preened herself in the reflected glory of the outspoken doctor. ‘He is a remarkable man. I feel he is wasted as a physician, noble though that profession may be. He could have been a major cleric or an officer of state.’

  ‘And what was the outcome of his efforts?’ asked de Wolfe.

  ‘Four or five of the canons, including the two who are proctors, promised to press the bishop most strongly as soon as he returns. They will insist on his arresting all known heretics and those suspected of such evil leanings, to bring them before a properly constituted ecclesiastical court – and to demand the most stringent penalties allowed by the Papal edicts. They will also insist on the proper harnessing of the secular powers, as prescribed by the Holy Father and his Legates.’

  She scowled at her husband even more fiercely. ‘So you and that lazy idiot of a sheriff will not be able to slide out of your responsibilities in future!’

  Matilda suddenly seemed to realise that she was failing in her long-lasting campaign of ignoring her husband, after all the indignities and disappointments that he had heaped upon her. She fell silent and attacked an inoffensive boiled capon as if it was John himself, savagely tearing off a leg and gnawing at it to indicate that the conversation was at an end, but her husband doggedly pursued the subject, as he needed to know what was in store, especially if it led to more unrest, riots and even murders.

  ‘So what will happen until the bishop eventually arrives home?’ he asked with false innocence. ‘Have they found more heretical victims to persecute?’

  She stared at him suspiciously but put down her chicken leg to take a drink from her wine-cup. ‘Canon William de Swindon, one of the proctors, told us that they will be sending out their bailiffs again, together with other agents, to seek informants who will trawl for unbelievers, both in the city and the county. They already know of one, the man who did not escape on that ship, no thanks to you!’ she snapped. ‘But they admit that until Bishop Marshal returns, there is little point in arresting him, as there is no competent tribunal able to try him.’

  ‘I suppose they mean that fuller, whose name I forget,’ he mused. Silently, he hoped the man would see the dangers and quietly leave the city, together with his family, if he had one. His wife made no reply, concentrating on her stew, her fowl and then the dessert that Mary brought in, a rosy almond cream with cinnamon and ginger.

  After the meal, when Matilda had stumped off to the solar for her afternoon rest, John sat by his fire with a jug of ale, as the day had turned colder, though the rain had stopped. He mused that autumn had not yet seemed to make its mind up to turn into winter, the flurries of snow that fell a couple of weeks earlier having turned to cold rain and occasional fog. He threw on a couple more oak logs from the stack alongside the hearth, stamping out some glowing embers that flew from the fire on to the stone floor. That was one fad of Matilda’s that was useful, as she had insisted on having the hall flagged, instead of the usual reeds or straw scattered over beaten earth. At least, he thought, it saves having the bloody stuff catching fire every time a spark spits out of the fire.

  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!’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In which the coroner attends a fire

  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.