The Sanctuary Seeker Read online

  John was disgusted with him. Violence was commonplace, but Gervaise’s cold-blooded plan to assassinate his own’s brother was outrageous. ‘You might as well have held the knife yourself, you evil worm!’ shouted John.

  Gwyn came up to whisper something in his ear. The coroner turned back to look down scathingly at the craven figure in sackcloth. ‘The wounds on the body of your brother strongly suggested that he had two attackers … and you claim you were not there?’

  Gervaise shook his head at the earth beneath his face. ‘Baldwyn again hired some outlaw to help him. First he went to Southampton and found such a fellow. The hired man had to seek out Hubert, as Baldwyn was well known to my brother. It was no problem tracing him, but then Baldwyn and his man waited until he left Southampton and covertly followed him.’

  There was a sudden commotion at the back of the crowd. ‘Here’s someone who can vouch for that – the felon himself!’

  Gervaise’s tale was interrupted by a shout from beyond the circle of onlookers. They parted to allow a man-at-arms push a way through for the constable of Rougemont.

  Behind him came another soldier, shoving a bedraggled figure with chains on his wrists and ankles – a man with two fingers missing from his right hand.

  After the hubbub had died down, Ralph Morin joined the inner group and stood alongside the coroner, his hands on his hips.

  Nebba, for certainly it was he, was forced down alongside Gervaise to kneel in the mud, completing de Bonneville’s ignominy: the Norman aristocrat now had to share the same filthy ground as a base outlaw.

  ‘We found this creature by sheer chance, Crowner,’ related Morin conversationally. ‘Early this morning, he robbed a merchant of his purse just outside the North Gate and made a run for it. Unfortunately for him the trader’s own son saw him, raised the hue-and-cry among the other stall-holders and overtook him before he reached the woods beyond St David’s.’

  The coroner reached down and grabbed the hair of the outlaw, jerking his head back so that he could look more closely at his defiant face. ‘You keep turning up in this matter, Nebba!’ he said. ‘Widecombe, Southampton … but I suspect that this will be your final appearance.’

  Morin gave the former archer a kick in the ribs. ‘He was recognised as an outlaw by those who seized him this morning – some were for lopping off his wolf’s head on the spot and collecting the bounty money. But then he spun some tale about bargaining for his life with some information about Gervaise de Bonneville here so, from curiosity, I listened to his tale.’

  The Saxon bowman, ever an optimist, cried out in his own defence, ‘This is hallowed ground, I claim sanctuary, just as I hear Sir Gervaise has done!’

  Morin gave him another blow with his boot. ‘Sanctuary, be damned! My soldiers brought you here and my soldiers will take you out again. Now, tell the Crowner the same tale you spun to me, to see if he believes you.’

  Nebba seemed fatalistically calm, compared to the nobleman alongside him in the dirt. He knew that he would hang soon, but a violent death was almost the inevitable end for a mercenary and an outlaw. The only doubt about it was when – rather than if – it would happen. His time had run out and that was that. Everyone has to die sometime.

  The castle constable prodded him again with his toe. ‘You told me that you were the ruffian that Baldwyn of Beer hired in Southampton, eh?’

  Nebba nodded, his matted hair bobbing over his dirty forehead. ‘He seemed to have an eye for a man who would do any task for a few marks. Found me in an inn, bought me some ale and offered me a job.’

  ‘I knew nothing of this!’ whimpered Gervaise. ‘I was many leagues away in my own manor.’

  John and Morin ignored him. ‘What then? Did Baldwyn say, “Kill me a man for two marks”?’ asked John sarcastically.

  ‘I knew nothing of that to start with, I just had to wander around Southampton and find this Sir Hubert. The Welsh agent, Gruffydd, eventually pointed me in the right direction.’

  Gwyn grunted in surprise. ‘He never told me that when I was talking to him!’

  Nebba continued his story resignedly. ‘Baldwyn said we needed to follow him without being seen. He said nothing of slitting his gizzard at that stage, but I soon got the drift of his intentions.’ He grinned at a sudden recollection, in spite of the certain knowledge that within days he would be hanging by the neck. ‘I had to run for it even then, as I’d relieved a fat merchant of his purse to get some drinking money – the damned fool resisted, so I had to stick him between the ribs to get away. But I arranged to meet up with Baldwyn again next day in the forest near Lyndhurst.’

  The rest of the unhappy tale was plain. The two assassins had tracked de Bonneville across Hampshire and Dorset. When their best opportunity came, on a bare moorside above Widecombe at dusk, they attacked Hubert together but, a seasoned fighter after his Crusading, he fought them off and raced down towards the village. ‘He nearly got away from us, blast him, but his horse put a foot in a rabbit hole and threw him off. We caught him up near Dunstone and continued the fight on foot.’

  ‘Two of you against one – a brave performance!’ John was cynical this morning.

  ‘He put up a good fight, I’ll say that,’ admitted Nebba, with some admiration. ‘Though I was never much good with a sword, I was brought up to use a long-bow.’

  ‘But you managed to stab him in the back, while that squire cut him in the arm from the front,’ snarled Gwyn, unable to conatin himself any longer.

  Nebba’s silence was as good as an admission of guilt.

  ‘What about the mare, the one with the black-ringed eye?’ demanded the coroner.

  Nebba sighed, as if realising that he could only be hanged once, so it made little odds what he confessed to now.

  ‘We dragged the body into some bushes near the hamlet of Dunstone and set his horse loose to wander away.’

  ‘If you left Hubert’s body in a thicket in Dunstone, how did it come to be found in a stream in Widecombe?’ John asked. Even as he spoke the words, he realised that his earlier suspicions about the Dunstone reeve were probably true and that the village had foisted the corpse on their neighbours to avoid trouble.

  Gwyn of Polruan picked up on another matter. ‘If you turned that grey mare loose, how did it come to be sold to Ralph the reeve?’

  Nebba shuffled his feet, his ankle chains clanking. ‘I didn’t trust that Baldwyn. One night he told me about the killing of that other fellow, that Aelfgar. Though he didn’t say outright, after a gallon of ale he made hints that he’d silenced the man for safety’s sake.’

  ‘So?’ grunted the Cornishman.

  ‘I didn’t turn my back to him for fear of getting it stabbed. I got him to pay me what he owed me, then slipped off back into the woods. I gave him time to clear off, then came back to find the mare.’

  ‘And sold it to the village reeve,’ finished John. ‘Well, I’ll see you at the hanging tree.’

  He jerked his head at Ralph Morin, who gestured to his men-at-arms to take Nebba back to the castle. Undoubtedly the next time he emerged it would would be for a one-way trip to the gallows. The gap in the crowd fused together after he had clanked mournfully away and attention was once more focused on the sorry figure of the abjurer, still kneeling in the mud.

  Gervaise seemed to have run out of confessions and John began his own part of the ritual. ‘You are a killer and a liar, and have enough felony on you to be hanged a dozen times over. But I have to accept your confession, as it seems to fit the sorry facts. Now you will take the oath of abjuration.’

  He turned to the motley collection of townsfolk behind him. ‘You, the jury, will witness everything that is said here.’

  The Archdeacon came forward with a copy of the Gospels from the cathedral and the kneeling penitent put his right hand on the cover. John de Alecon took care to keep the valuable book well away from the mire.

  Gwyn bellowed for silence and John then spoke the words of the oath, making Gervaise repeat them after e
very line.

  ‘This hear thou, Sir John de Wolfe, that I, Gervaise de Bonneville of Peter Tavy in the county of Devon, am an instigator and conspirator in the murder of Aelfgar of Totnes and my own brother, Hubert de Bonneville. And because I have done such evils in this land, I do swear on this Holy Book, that I will leave and abjure the realm of England and never return without the express permission of our lord Richard, King of England or his heirs.’

  Gervaise stumbled over the words many times and his voice dropped to become inaudible now and then, but the coroner remorselessly made him repeat any faulty passages.

  ‘I shall hasten by the direct road towards the port which you have allotted me and I will not leave the King’s highway under pain of arrest or execution. I will not stay at one place more than one night and I will diligently seek for a passage across the sea as soon as I arrive. I will tarry there only one flood and ebb, if I can have such passage. If I cannot secure such passage, I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, as a token of my desire to cross. And if I cannot secure such passage within forty days, I will put myself again within a church … and if I fail in all this, then let peril be my lot.’

  Satisfied with this, John then told the felon to rise and lifted the right hand that clutched the rough cross high into the air. It was merely two sticks, one as tall as Gervaise, the other a two-foot cross-bar, which the abjurer had been made to bind together with some rough twine. Then he was given a pair of crude wooden-soled shoes and the time to send him on his way had finally come.

  The crowd were still growling at him and a stone, thrown with unerring aim by an urchin, hit him on the side of the head, causing blood to trickle down between the ragged clumps of shorn hair. John grasped him by the shoulders and turned him to face away from the cathedral.

  ‘You will walk from here bare-headed to Plymouth to seek a ship to France or Brittany. You have been given sufficient of the contents of your purse to pay for a passage and to keep you alive for a number of days. You have two days and two nights to get to Plymouth on foot, which should be ample. Remember, you must abide strictly by the terms of your oath. If you fail, by staying more than one night in any place or by straying an inch off the highway, people are entitled to treat you as the wolf and behead you. And if you ever set foot in England again, you will be outlawed and your wolf’s head forfeit to any man who can lift a sword.’ The coroner gave him a token push. ‘Now go!’

  The Archdeacon and the Precentor chanted, ‘May God have mercy on your soul,’ and made the sign of the cross in the air, feverishly mimicked by Thomas de Peyne, who had been writing energetically on his roll draped over a large stone left by the masons.

  To the jeers and abuse of the crowd, Gervaise jerked forward and began to walk towards the exit of the Cathedral Close, which led to the West Gate, the river and the road to Plymouth.

  The sergeant and his men beat a path for him through the hostile crowd and a man-at-arms walked alongside the abjurer to make sure that at least he got out of the city in one piece.

  The coroner stood watching, with Gwyn and the Archdeacon at his side. ‘There he goes! It seems unjust that he kills two or three men and walks away, while a child who steals a jug is hanged.’ John was bitter and philosophical at the same time.

  ‘What about that man who was made to suffer the Ordeal?’ enquired John de Alecon. ‘It seems that he was unjustly accused.’

  The Precentor naturally took an opposite view. ‘It proves the efficacy of the ritual. As he survived the scalding, it proved his innocence.’

  ‘He damned near died,’ John snapped. ‘Only his strong constitution saved him. Let’s hope the ministrations of the holy sisters will make him fit again.’

  Thomas de Boterellis had no answer to this and kept a sulky silence when the Archdeacon expressed the hope that Alan Fitzhai would find it in his heart to forgive the sheriff for his actions.

  The crowd dispersed and, though a few youths and idiots had followed de Bonneville to the gate, the mass hatred seemed to have faded as readily as it had come.

  Yet John was still uneasy about the abjurer, as he disappeared into the distance. ‘I keep thinking about the Palatine of Durham and the way they shepherd their exiles,’ he said to Gwyn.

  The Cornishman was unimpressed. ‘Good riddance, I say. If someone wants to take a swing at him with a battleaxe or broadsword, then good luck to them.’

  His bloodthirsty sentiments were interrupted by Matilda who had left a conversation with another woman spectator and was approaching John. Gwyn melted away, there being mutual dislike between them. John noticed that Nesta, too, had diplomatically vanished.

  ‘You seem to have done something right for a change, husband,’ said Matilda. In spite of her two-edged words, the tone was not critical, and John sensed that she was pleased with him for once.

  ‘I hated seeing that evil young man get away so easily, but sanctuary and abjuration have long been our custom,’ he said.

  His wife failed to think that Gervaise had suffered too lightly. ‘He’s lost everything, hasn’t he? Pride, position, possessions and inheritance.’

  All these losses would be worse than death to Matilda, thought her husband. ‘Abjurers have a strange way of coming back, lady,’ he forecast gloomily. ‘Even if – God forbid – King Richard were to die, it’s not clear whether the exile only lasts for his reign. And many an abjurer has slipped back quietly into the country after all the fuss has died down.’

  ‘That’s no concern of yours, John. You did your duty well and that’s all that can be asked of you.’

  As they walked slowly towards St Martin’s Lane, he still had a nagging concern about his responsibility to the ragged abjurer, now plodding to Plymouth to find a shipmaster willing to take him to France.

  At least John was content that his contempt for the man had not allowed him to be vindictive in his choice of port. Yet the anger of the crowd, short-lived though it seemed, made him wonder if de Bonneville would see Plymouth alive.

  He found that, during his reverie, they had arrived outside their house and his wife was speaking to him. ‘Are you going to eat now or this evening? Mary can make something if you’re hungry.’

  Matilda’s concern for his well-being was a novelty and John was surprised at how he welcomed it. Not because he had discovered any new-found affection for her, but as a relief from the usual sparring and fighting. However, he had other things on his mind. He came to a sudden decision. ‘No, but I’ll come in to change my cloak and get my riding boots.’

  As he pulled on his travelling outfit and hung his baldric across his shoulder to carry his sword, Matilda wanted to know where he was going. ‘To follow our abjurer – I want to see that he at least gets well away from the city alive.’

  Leaving her on the doorstep, shaking her head in a resigned lack of understanding of the man who shared her life and her bed, the coroner hurried across to the stables and helped the farrier to saddle up Bran, his huge stallion.

  He trotted away towards the West Gate, more than an hour after Gervaise had trudged off in a welter of abuse.

  Eager to put as much distance between himself and Exeter as possible, still fresh and not yet footsore, de Bonneville had covered quite a distance in that hour. He was already well into the trees towards Alphington when John, now walking his horse quietly, saw him in the distance.

  The Plymouth road was moist after a shower during the night, but not too deeply rutted in mud. It was deserted apart from the bedraggled figure in brown sackcloth, who held the cross before his chest like some talisman to ward off evil, even though, as far as the coroner was concerned, he was the epitome of evil himself. John kept pace with him at a considerable distance, so that Gervaise remained unaware of his presence. Now that he was out of sight, as he thought, of the law officers who had ruined his life, the man from Peter Tavy was turning over in his mind all the options. Should he throw away his cross and step into the trees to become an outlaw? There seemed little point in doing
that here, so the next option was to walk on until he came near Tavistock and his manor. But what could he do there? By that time, the news of his disgrace would have reached his home.

  He had seen no sign of Martyn, who must have forsaken him in loathing. He had not even come to see him in sanctuary and had been conspicuously absent at the abjuration ceremony that morning. Martyn had worshipped Gervaise and would never forgive him for what he had done. Return to Peter Tavy seemed pointless, as his only real ally, Baldwyn, was dead. The cousins were waiting like carrion crows to pick up what they could of the inheritance and this affair could be nothing but a delight to them. Now they had only the weak, malleable Martyn to deal with, the brother who should have taken holy orders, rather than the sword.

  As he marched along with his crude cross, the clogs were starting to chafe his heels and toes and Gervaise realised that the fifty miles to Plymouth were not going to be the easy march he had first imagined, but he resigned himself to taking ship from there to France. He had distant relatives in Normandy, and as long as they had no news of his disgrace, he could start to rebuild his life – anything was better than dangling by the neck on the end of a rope.

  He trudged on for another hour, past the village of Kennford, where several children and some dogs came to jeer and bark at him. A few carters’ wagons passed him in the other direction, the drivers ignoring him.

  He was still oblivious of John, a quarter of a mile behind him, Bran’s hoofs muffled in the soft slime.

  On a long curve of track, where the forest came right to the edge of the road, he was suddenly aware of a noise in the tall trees on his right, but he could see nothing. Feeling naked without a sword or even a cudgel, he was wary of attack, but the crackling stopped and he carried on, though the hairs on his neck had risen in tense apprehension.

  John was thinking of giving up his impromptu escort duty and returning home – he began to wonder why he had wasted his time in the first place. The curve in the track had taken the abjurer out of sight but when he came round the bend the situation had dramatically changed.