The Witch Hunter Read online

  ‘I want to know why I wasted my money on you. In fact, I want it back, as you did nothing for me!’

  The apothecary squirmed at the harsh, uncompromising tone of the merchant. ‘Give it time, master! I will devise some other means, never fear.’

  Henry gave a humourless laugh, almost a bark. ‘You haven’t heard, then? You’re too late, you useless worm. The man’s dead!’

  Walter gaped, then a false smile cracked his face, pushing his teeth even farther out. ‘Then it did work! I told you to be patient.’

  ‘No thanks to you, you charlatan! Fifteen shillings I’ve paid you altogether, over the past months – and for what?’

  ‘But he’s dead – which is what you wanted all along!’ protested the smaller man. ‘My tampering with his medicaments had the desired effect in the end.’

  De Hocforde leaned forward threateningly. ‘You’re changing your tune now. The last time I was here, to complain that nothing had happened, you said you had stopped the poison, as it was without effect. You were working on something else. So how has he just died, when you ceased your efforts four weeks ago, eh?’

  The apothecary wrung his hands in agitation. ‘I told you, sir, this is a slow poison, it had to be to avoid any suspicion. Its action is cumulative. It continues to reside in the body long after the dosing has ceased.’

  ‘Nonsense, man! The fellow stayed as fit as a fox after two months of your pathetic efforts.’

  Winstone shook his head emphatically. ‘Indeed not. I attended him weekly and he showed certain signs of the plumbism I was inducing. He had belly-ache and was almost totally costive – his wife told me that he spent hours in the privy with no result.’

  Henry de Hocforde went red in the face. ‘I don’t give a damn whether he could shite or not! I paid you to kill him and you failed dismally. So just give me back my fifteen shillings and I’ll not darken your door again!’

  Although Walter was a timid man, the thought of handing over a hundred and eighty silver pennies provoked some desperate defiance. ‘So why then did he die, if it wasn’t from my efforts?’ he bleated.

  ‘Because I took other measures, my patience with yours being exhausted!’ hissed the fulling master. ‘Last week I sought out a witch to place a curse on de Pridias – at a fraction of the cost that I wasted on you!’

  Walter’s watery eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘A curse? Surely you can’t believe in that old witch’s nonsense?’

  ‘This old witch did the trick. This afternoon the fellow fell from his horse, stone dead!’

  ‘Sheer coincidence. It was the long-term effect of my Plumbium acetas, without a shadow of doubt!’ stammered the apothecary.

  For answer, Henry held out his hand menacingly. ‘My money – now!’

  Walter Winstone backed away slightly, but his defiance remained, mixed with cunning. ‘It would go ill with you if the news leaked out that you had done away with a rival merchant … all Exeter knows that you have been trying to wrest the ownership of his mill from him!’

  De Hocforde’s hand shot out and grabbed the smaller man by the shoulder. He dragged him close and bent so that his inflamed face was inches from the man’s nose. ‘You little rat! Who was it who had been feeding poison to the man for weeks? D’you think anyone would take you word against mine, you miserable little tyke? You’d hang from the gallows tree and I’d be there to see you off!’

  He shoved the apothecary away and Walter staggered back and fell heavily against the far wall.

  ‘Now give me that money – or you’ll wake up one morning soon and find your throat’s been cut! I know men in this city who’ll kill for a shilling – a pity discretion stopped me from employing them on de Pridias.’

  Defeated for now, the apothecary fumbled at his belt for some keys and went reluctantly towards a locked chest in the corner.

  When John de Wolfe strode out into Martin’s Lane with his hound, he had intended to go straight down to the Bush tavern, but he was accosted by a familiar figure as he entered the Close. As he began walking between the mounds and grave-pits of the burial ground towards the huge bulk of the cathedral, he saw a lean, cassocked figure approaching from the direction of the West Front.

  It was John de Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, one of the four archdeacons who under Bishop Henry Marshal, administered the various parts of the large diocese of Devon and Cornwall. Though de Wolfe was by no means an enthusiastic churchgoer, the two Johns were firm friends, their main bond being mutual loyalty to King Richard and antipathy to his treacherous brother, Prince John, Count of Mortain.

  The priest waved a greeting and the coroner waited for him to approach, as he was obviously heading for his dwelling in the row of canons’ houses that formed the northern side of the cathedral Close. He was a thin man, not overly tall, but erect. Some years older than John, the shock of wiry hair that surrounded his shaven tonsure was iron grey. A bony, somewhat sad face was relieved by a pair of clear blue eyes, which twinkled as he grasped his friend’s arm in greeting.

  ‘Another fine evening, after all those terrible weeks of rain. Let’s hope the harvest will be saved, God willing.’ The words were spoken fervently, not as a casual remark. The awful growing season of that year might mean starvation for many next winter, unless the crops could revive within the next month. That the day was unusually hot was demonstrated by the absence of the archdeacon’s hooded cloak, an almost obligatory part of a senior priest’s outdoor dress.

  ‘Come over for a cup of wine, John. I have some new Poiteau red I’d like you to try.’

  John de Alençon was an ascetic man, unlike many of the twenty-four canons of the Exeter chapter, some of whom revelled in luxurious living. But his one weakness was fine wine, which he appreciated for its quality, rather than quantity.

  The two Johns walked together through the mess of the Close, weaving along paths of hardened mud between heaps of rubbish strewn among the graves. Beggars, cripples and drunks squatted on their haunches and pedlars rattled their trays at them as they passed. Urchins and louts ran across the resting-places of the dead, playing ball or tag and ignoring the screeches of protest from mothers and old crones when the infants in their charge were pushed over.

  ‘This place is becoming a disgrace,’ grumbled the coroner, glowering at the incongruity of these squalid acres, compared to the majesty of the cathedral that soared above them.

  His friend agreed, with a sigh of frustration. ‘With only a couple of men working under our proctors, it’s impossible to control it. And it’s the only open space in the city where the people can escape the squalor of the streets.’ The cathedral Close was an enclave belonging solely to the Church, where only canon law applied, even the sheriff and coroner having no jurisdiction here, except along the main pathways.

  They passed the treasurer’s house, built against the north wall of the cathedral and reached Canons’ Row, the narrow road that bounded the north side of the Close. There they made for one of the central houses of the dozen or so that stretched from St Martin’s Church across to the city wall. It was an old two-storey structure of timber, with a thatched roof. A side passage went around the back, where the usual stable, kitchen-shed, privy, wash house and pigsty were set in a muddy yard, alongside a small area that the archdeacon kept as a private garden.

  John commanded Brutus to wait outside as they went up to the iron-bound front door. They were met by John’s steward-cum-bottler, one of only three servants that the austere priest employed. They went into his study, a small room on the ground floor, where de Alençon spent most of his time. A table, two stools and a low cot in one corner were the only furniture, apart from a large wooden crucifix on the wall. The rest of the house was occupied by his two vicars-choral, who deputised for him at some of the nine services each day – and several secondaries and choristers, young men who were prospective priests in training.

  John waved his guest to one of the stools and sat on the other, pushing aside a pile of leather-bound books on
the table to make way for a flask of wine and two goblets that his servant brought in. The goblets were another luxury, being of heavy glass, instead of the usual pottery or pewter. When they had sampled the French wine and commented on its taste, the archdeacon turned to current events, especially his friend’s recent activities. He always seemed fascinated by the coroner’s work and liked to be kept up to date with happenings outside his sheltered ecclesiastical world.

  After relating a few tales about various inquests and cases at the last Shire Court, de Wolfe told him about the death of Robert de Pridias that day.

  ‘I met him several times,’ mused the canon. ‘Both at guild feasts and when our treasurer purchased a large consignment of cloth for garments for our secondaries and servants. He had many weavers working for him, as well as his fulling mill, so he must have been quite a rich man.’

  When the coroner told him of the widow’s accusations against Henry de Hocforde – and the finding of the pierced effigy – de Alençon frowned. ‘Defaming a man like that is unseemly, even allowing for the distress of a bereaved wife,’ he said sadly. ‘But this business of the straw figure is a sign of the Church’s failure to banish magic from the common mind. I despair of ever completely wresting superstition from our flock.’

  John gave one of his rare lopsided grins. ‘Isn’t religion just a different kind of superstition, John? We worship a God that none of us has ever seen and we revere his son who was a Jew living in a distant land a thousand years ago!’

  If the archdeacon hadn’t known his friend’s penchant for teasing him on the subject of his faith, he would have been shocked – might even have accused him of heresy. As it was, he smiled gently.

  ‘I know full well you don’t mean that, John de Wolfe! But seriously, the efforts of priests like myself over centuries have only managed to lay a thin skin of Christianity over most of our population.’

  He stopped to savour his wine, then continued. ‘Many find it hard to distinguish between the mysteries of the Holy Sacrament and the antics of the old wives and witches who cast spells for a wench to get a good husband or to make their neighbour’s cattle fertile.’

  ‘So you don’t think that de Pridias was done to death by necromancy?’ asked the coroner, half jokingly.

  ‘It’s too ridiculous even to contemplate,’ said the archdeacon, rather sharply. ‘You did right in refusing to pander to the woman’s nonsense, though of course I’m sad for her in her loss, God rest his soul.’ He made the sign of the Cross, reminding de Wolfe again of his own clerk’s irritating habit.

  ‘If the Church so disapproves of the widespread belief in magic and the casting of spells, why does it not proscribe it more severely?’ asked John, the wine putting him in a ruminative mood. ‘Your masters in Rome have always been quick enough to pounce drastically on any whisper of heresy or other activity which is not to their taste.’

  De Alençon smiled wryly at his friend’s deliberately provocative cynicism. ‘That day may come, John, but at present we have more pressing enemies at the gates of God’s kingdom, as you should well know, having been a Crusader yourself.’

  The coroner continued to worry at the topic like a dog with a bone. ‘But such widespread superstition surely cuts at the heart of your teachings that there is only one God. If he is the jealous God that the Scriptures describe to us, then should not his servants – the Church – be trampling these witches and wizards underfoot?’

  The archdeacon, warming to a theological debate, raised his eyebrows at his friend. ‘Where does all this philosophical talk come from, John? You always pretended to be a rough, blunt soldier. You must have been listening too much to that strange relative of mine.’

  Thomas de Peyne, the coroner’s clerk, was de Alençon’s nephew and it was through his influence with de Wolfe that the disgraced little priest had at last been given a job. Once a teacher in the cathedral school at Winchester, he had been defrocked when a girl had accused him of interfering with her. Only ‘benefit of clergy’ had prevented him being hanged for attempted rape, but he had almost starved after being ejected from holy orders, until he walked all the way to Exeter to throw himself on his uncle’s mercy.

  De Wolfe drank the rest of his wine and refused another glass, as he intended drinking ale at the Bush. Before he left, he made one last assault on his friend’s implacable faith.

  ‘So you’re not going to round up and hang all the cunning women in Devon? They can continue to compete with the bishop and all his minions in working miracles, without any challenge?’

  The archdeacon prodded him hard in the chest with a finger. ‘You’re trying to provoke me, John. You must be short of other challenges this week.’

  As they walked to the front door, the priest had the last word. ‘These old wives – though not so old, some of them – do little harm and quite a lot of good, John. Many folk cannot afford to visit an apothecary and, anyway, there are none to visit out in the countryside. Many a croup or constipation has been cured by their harmless herbal potions. And if people are gullible enough to pay a ha’penny for a spell to make their lover more potent or to get a better crop of beans, who are we to deny them?’

  De Wolfe had to be satisfied with this moderate and civilised comment, and it gave him something to think about as he whistled for his dog and set off for the tavern.

  The archdeacon’s words were still on his mind when he reached Idle Lane, a short track joining Priest Street to the top of Stepcote Hill, which led down towards the West Gate. The name came from the waste ground that surrounded the ale-house – several years earlier, a fire had destroyed the surrounding wooden houses, leaving the stone-built inn standing, and as yet only weeds and bushes had reclaimed the scorched area.

  He pushed open the front door, over which a large bundle of twigs hung from a bracket, perpetuating the old Roman sign for a tavern. The big room that occupied the whole ground floor was crowded with drinkers, this being a popular place, famed for its good ale, decent food and relatively clean mattresses in the loft. Thankfully, the warm summer evening did not require a fire in the large stone hearth against the end wall, which made the atmosphere redolent only of the smell of spilt ale, sweat and unwashed bodies, without the eye-watering swirl of wood smoke from the chimney-less fireplace. Benches around the walls and a few rough tables surrounded by stools formed the amenities for patrons, all set on a rush-covered earth floor. At least the rushes were clean, being replaced every few days – unlike in the nearest rival tavern, the notorious Saracen on Stepcote Hill, where the filthy straw was more a nest for rats than a floor-covering.

  John advanced to his favourite place against a wattle screen set at the side of the hearth. A couple of young men seated at the small table immediately rose and, bobbing their heads in respect, found stools elsewhere. All the regulars at the Bush knew that this was the coroner’s spot and yielded it to him with good grace.

  He sat down and Brutus slid under the table after a longing look at two patrons opposite, who were sharing a pig’s knuckle on a thick trencher of gravy-soaked stale bread. The old dog knew that with luck, the bone would come his way when they had finished.

  De Wolfe settled his back against the screen and looked around contentedly. For once, his life was fairly stable. Matilda was her usual grumpy self, but was not in any particularly belligerent mood – at least, not until Cecilia de Pridias stirred her into action, as she surely would. His mistress was neither pregnant nor having another affair with a younger man and even Thomas seemed to have abandoned his efforts at suicide. Gwyn, of course, was the same as ever – gruff, amiable and constant in his fidelity.

  Feeling at peace with himself, John looked around the crowded taproom, nodding to several aquaintances, who touched their foreheads in a respectful salute to a man almost everyone admired and not a few feared. As the second-most powerful law officer in the county, he was looked upon with some awe by many, yet most acknowledged him as a fair-minded man with an honourable record of serving their king in
many a campaign, from Ireland to the Holy Land.

  His eyes roved about, but he could not see Nesta, his beloved Welsh mistress. At the back of the chamber was a row of casks propped up on stands and wedges, from which old Edwin, the potman and one of the serving-maids, drew the ale and cider that had made this establishment famous in the city. As soon as Edwin’s one remaining eye saw that the coroner had come in, he filled a clay quart pot from the barrel of ‘best’, and limped over with it, dragging his war-wounded leg through the rushes.

  Banging the jar on the table, he beamed a crooked grin at John, the white of his dead eye rolling horribly, a legacy of a spear-thrust at the Battle of Wexford. He greeted John, using his old military title.

  ‘Evening, Cap’n! The mistress is out in the brew-shed, stirring the mash. She’ll be in shortly.’

  Nesta was the genius behind the quality of the ale, having learned her trade in her native Gwent before moving to Devon some years before. She was the widow of Meredydd, a Welsh archer who had served under John, until they had both given up campaigning. He had bought the inn with his accumulated booty from years of warfare, but within twelve months was dead of the yellow jaundice, leaving his wife almost destitute with debt and with a tavern to run alone. De Wolfe had come to her rescue with a loan and gradually a business relationship had grown into affection and then love. It was no secret in the city, where most affluent men had a leman or two – and it was certainly no secret to Matilda, who bore the burden of his infidelity with abrasive ill grace, though she could not bring herself to abandon her marriage to such a senior member of the Norman hierarchy.

  John took a deep draught of the ale, a slightly cloudy brew flavoured with oak galls, then stared again at the back of the taproom. A wide wooden ladder gave access to the upper floor, which was mainly an open loft where straw-filled pallets provided the accommodation for overnight lodgers. However, one corner had been partitioned off as a small bedroom for the landlady, in which John had installed a French bed, a novelty in a city where most folk, even the well-to-do, slept on a mattress at floor level. He had spent many a passionate hour in there and even a few nights, when either his boldness or circumstances allowed. Tonight was not going to be one of them, he mused ruefully, his eyes still roaming around for a sight of his mistress.