A Plague of Heretics (Crowner John Mysteries) Read online

  ‘The facts will have to be put before the Justices of Assize, as a matter of record,’ said John doggedly, even though it might be to his disadvantage.

  ‘I hope so – otherwise that persistent troublemaker de Revelle will wriggle out of it once again,’ growled Morin.

  Thomas de Peyne ventured a suggestion, which was always worth heeding. ‘The Chief Justiciar knows the situation in Devon very well, sir. Should not a letter be sent to him, explaining what has happened? As he’s Archbishop of Canterbury as well, the fact that this grew out of a heresy problem makes it all the more relevant.’

  Archbishop Hubert Walter was an old Crusader and knew John de Wolfe better than most other men. It would be a good insurance against any repercussions over this affair, and the sheriff approved of the idea.

  ‘The next time I go to Westminster with the county farm for the Exchequer, I’ll take such a letter – and see Hubert myself to explain what’s been going on here.’

  They sat drinking for a moment longer, then Gwyn opened up a different aspect of the drama.

  ‘What about these other killings?’ he grunted. ‘Are they all down to this doctor fellow?’

  De Wolfe reflectively scratched a flea bite on his head. ‘Maybe we’ll never know! With Clement’s confessed guilt about my wife and to burning that family to death, as well as attacking his wife and her maid, everyone will be happy to lay all other crimes at his feet.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no reason why he couldn’t have done them,’ boomed Ralph Morin. ‘As a physician, he travelled about outside Exeter. It’s no distance to Wonford, and the other murders were actually in the city.’

  The sheriff shrugged. ‘As John says, we’ll never know the whole truth, though he seems the most obvious culprit. The way that poor man’s voice-box was cut out smacks of medical knowledge to me.’

  ‘Yet that mad monk Alan de Bere and his fanatical friend Rugge were crazy enough to have been the killers,’ countered John.

  ‘And I wouldn’t put it past those proctors’ men, either!’ added Brother Rufus darkly. ‘Whoever it was, God will know well enough when it comes to the Day of Judgement.’

  Thomas nodded fervently and crossed himself, and with a sense of anticlimax the meeting broke up, John taking Mary back next door, leaving his mother and Hilda to care for the bruised and battered women.

  Gwyn and Thomas thought it best to leave their master to his own thoughts, so John settled in his chair in the empty hall, with only Brutus and a cup of wine for company.

  He sat brooding darkly on what he had just heard. This was the very chamber in which that bastard Clement had ended his wife’s life, and though John was not sufficient of a hypocrite to shed crocodile tears, it was still his wife and the woman who had shared his life for so many years, albeit intermittently. What right had that swine to take her away in such a violent fashion? The sudden horror of that episode even overshadowed the obvious liberation that it had given him, the freedom now to be with Hilda. His blonde mistress and lifelong friend was sensitive enough to avoid the subject for now, until the emotional avalanche had levelled out.

  She said she would stay at the Bush for another two nights, to attend Matilda’s funeral, which John de Alençon had arranged for tomorrow in the cathedral. Then she would have to go back with Enyd, who was keen to return to help Evelyn look after William, who was still very weak. John was determined to escort them back himself, as he was desperate to see his brother returning to health.

  He sat for a while longer before going up to Rougemont, where Gwyn said a local case needed his attention. He would also have to hold an inquest on Clement of Salisbury later that day – on reflection, it was fortunate that he had killed himself, as John had been fully prepared to run his sword through him if he had found him alive, getting himself into more trouble.

  Richard Lustcote, whom John called to look at the body and the broken flask, had said that from the smell and tentative taste, the black fluid was a strong extract of monkshood and belladonna and possibly other poisons that the physician would have had in his pharmacopoeia.

  With a sigh he hauled himself out of his chair and, with a final pensive glance at the empty one on the other side of the hearth, he went out of the hall to carry on with his life.

  Epilogue

  Three months later, on a clear winter’s day, Sir John de Wolfe was married to Hilda of Dawlish in the porch of St Andrew’s Church in Stoke-in-Teignhead, the parchment with the banns still nailed to the door as they faced it for the ceremony, as was the tradition.

  The slim blonde, in a long gown of blue satin under a fur-lined pelisse of dark blue velvet, was attended by a beaming Evelyn as maid of honour. John, in a new grey tunic and mantle, had his brother William as his wedding squire, still thin and pale but happy to be back in charge of his beloved manors.

  After Father Martin, assisted by Thomas de Peyne, had completed the ceremony and taken them inside the church for the nuptial Mass and a blessing, they all adjourned to the nearby Church Hostel for the ‘bride-ale’, a lavish feast, which overflowed on to the street, where trestles were spread with food and drink for the whole village, the festivities lasting until well after dark.

  Many guests had come down from Exeter by cart and on horseback the previous day, so that all John’s friends were there to wish them good fortune. Gwyn, Martha, Mary, Henry de Furnellis, John de Alençon, Hugh de Relaga, Ralph Morin, Gabriel were there – even Andrew the livery man, who provided the transport. A further large contingent came across the river from Holcombe, including all Hilda’s extensive family.

  As John stood with an arm around the slim waist of his lovely bride, a hand grasping a cup of mead, a thought penetrated the haze of his happy confusion. He wondered where Nesta was at this moment, the Welsh woman whom he had undoubtedly loved, as he now loved Hilda. Was she still happily married to her stonemason in Chepstow and was there perhaps a chubby infant at her breast? Would she ever learn of Matilda’s death?

  Another person who did not attend the wedding was Cecilia, who, as soon as she fully recovered, left the house and returned to live with her family in Worcester, taking Lucille with her as her maid, as her own did not wish to leave her folks in the city. Cecilia had confessed to John that she felt out of place in Exeter, being a reminder to the citizens of the harm that her husband had done there. Though de Wolfe did not appreciate it, the perceptive Mary suspected that Hilda was secretly pleased that the handsome widow was going far enough away not to be a temptation to a susceptible next-door neighbour!

  Yet another notable absentee was Richard de Revelle, whom John had not laid eyes on since Matilda’s funeral, when they both studiously ignored each other. That sad occasion had also been well attended, as Matilda’s many friends from St Olave’s and the cathedral had been augmented by a large number of sympathetic citizens. The Requiem Mass was conducted by the archdeacon, and she was laid to rest under the floor before the altar of St John in the nave, right up against the rood screen. Since then, John had had it covered by an inscribed granite slab, which recorded Matilda’s name for posterity.

  John had heard nothing more from Aubrey de Courtenay, the Dorset coroner. The sheriff had gone on his routine visit to Westminster with his pony-train of panniers filled with silver coins and had seen Hubert Walter, who had sent his condolences to John and told him to ignore any legal complications that the Justices in Eyre might raise when they eventually came to Exeter. He also forcibly expressed the wish that John continue as county coroner, for de Wolfe had had some qualms about his position, given that he had been arrested, committed for murder and had sought sanctuary as a common criminal, even though the allegations proved unfounded.

  This hardened his resolve to stay in the city, rather than move to Hilda’s fine house in Dawlish, as she had suggested. She did not want to move permanently to Exeter, so they compromised by living part-time in each place, with Hilda spending at least one week a month at the coast and John going from there to visit his fam
ily at Stoke far more often since the scare over his brother’s health.

  The yellow plague vanished from Devon as mysteriously as it had arrived, but reports from other parts of the country showed that it struck sporadically here and there. However, it claimed one last victim in the city and simultaneously cleared up one last mystery. The mad monk, Alan de Bere, had been living in his hovel on the marshes near the river, when he was struck by the dreaded disease. As someone in holy orders, however renegade he had become, he was taken to St John’s Hospital, where it was soon all too apparent that he was dying. Brother Saulf urged him to make a last confession and, surprisingly, de Bere gasped that he wished to confess to murder and wanted a law officer to be present. John de Wolfe was away at his brother’s manor, so Gwyn and Thomas were called instead. In their presence, the monk admitted that he and Reginald Rugge, the weird lay brother from St Olave’s, had taken it into their own hands to cleanse the world of two heretics whom the Church seemed unable to deal with. These were the porter from Bretayne and the man from Wonford. The first they smothered and hid among the plague victims, the other man they stabbed and hid in the earth closet.

  ‘And what about the woodcarver whose throat you tore out?’ growled Gwyn, standing uncaringly over the yellowed man who lay dying at his feet.

  Alan de Bere stared up at the massive Cornishman. ‘I swear to God we had nothing to do with that,’ he whispered. ‘That must have been one of the doctor’s.’

  As they left the priory, Gwyn and Thomas walked in silence for a while. ‘Is that confession going to be any use, given that two priests were present?’ grunted Gwyn.

  Thomas nodded. ‘He asked for a law officer, so he intended it to be known far and wide. It had none of the inviolacy of the confessional, so it can be disclosed to the coroner. Sir John will welcome it to clear up two uncompleted inquests.’

  ‘So what about the woodcarver, Nicholas Budd? That bloody monk back there says he didn’t do it – and I can’t see why he should tell anything but the truth on his deathbed.’

  Thomas crossed himself jerkily. ‘God rest him, however evil he’s been. If it wasn’t that awful pair, then it must have been the doctor. We thought at the time that someone with medical skill may have cut out that voice-box so neatly.’ He shuddered at the memory, as they walked on. There was no way to squeeze the truth out of Reginald Rugge, as he had vanished immediately after Clement’s death and by now was probably living rough somewhere in the forest.

  The heretics had also vanished – or, at least, were keeping such a low profile that no more was heard of the canons’ crusade against them. De Wolfe suspected that the revulsion against the burning of the fuller’s family had quenched everyone’s appetite for pursuing them. Certainly, John de Alençon told him that the bishop had no desire to make an issue of the matter, in spite of the Papal Legate’s letter. Henry Marshal was more concerned with keeping an eye on Prince John’s chances of becoming king, which should lead to his own advancement in the hierarchy of government.

  In Martin’s Lane life went on almost as usual. Mary was content to keep house for John and his new wife, with whom she got on exceedingly well. Gwyn and Martha revelled in their tenancy of the Bush Inn, though the big Cornishman still acted as John’s officer. Thomas continued as his clerk, but also managed to fit in his teaching at the choir school and his duties in the scriptorium.

  Six months later the Eyre of Assize came at last to Exeter and John half-expected to be summoned before the justices, but he heard nothing of it and it appeared likely that the Chief Justiciar had warned them off. Richard de Revelle sold his town house in Exeter and no one of John’s acquaintance had laid eyes on him for months, so he was probably lying low in his manor at Revelstoke in the far west of the county.

  ‘And long may the bastard stay there!’ was de Wolfe’s heartfelt comment to Gwyn and Thomas.

  Historical Note

  ‘Heresy’ in the religious sense is any significant dissension from an accepted (usually majority) view of faith and doctrine. Almost every religion has, or had, its heretics. Islam has many contentious factions, especially the Sunni and the Shia, who each consider the other as heretical, as well as Alawis, Ismailis, Sufis, Ahmadis, etc. Orthodox Judaism has various dissenters but Christianity has had the most diverse variations, about forty ‘heresies’ having been recorded during its long history.

  The oldest is Gnosticism, which originated in the Near East and predates Christianity but later competed with its doctrines, believing that the material world was evil and that knowledge was given by God to those who placed it before blind faith. They claimed that the teachings of Jesus were more important than his death and resurrection.

  Arianism, named after a priest of Antioch in the fourth century, claimed that Christ was mortal, being only an intermediary between God and Man. The cult was condemned by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, which declared that Christ was one with God, but Arianism persisted until at least the seventh century.

  Pelagianism was founded by Pelagius, a Welsh monk probably from the monastery of Bangor-on-Dee, who was in Rome about AD 400 and attacked the Church’s corruption and the contention, championed by St Augustine of Hippo, that all men were born with original sin and only the intervention of the Church could save them by supplying the grace of God. He believed that men had innate goodness and the free will to save themselves without the intervention of priests, and he denied the concept of predestination. Pelagianism became powerful in Dark Age Britain, and the Pope sent St Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, here twice in the mid-fifth century to try to combat the heresy. The essence of Pelagianism survived for many centuries and its concepts are accepted by many to this day.

  The Cathars or Albigensians, as well as similar groups like the Bogomils, the Poor Men of Lyons, Publicani, etc., were widespread between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in France, Italy, Bulgaria and Germany. They were dualists, believing in two gods, one good, one evil. Like the Gnostics, they claimed that the material world was evil, created by Satan, and that man’s body was evil, but his soul was godly. They were extremely ascetic, denied the Cross and rejected marriage and procreation. The cult became widespread in France and Italy, having eleven Cathar bishoprics by the twelfth century. They posed such a threat to the Catholic Church that in 1209 the latter mounted a Crusade against them under Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who crushed them with terrible slaughter and cruelty, especially in southwestern France.

  1 See The Elixir of Death.