Miles Vavasour was putting the case against the apprentice of St. John’s Street, Janekin, for murdrum voluntarium with odii meditatione, or wilful homicide of one Radulf Strago, merchant, done in contemplation of hatred. Janekin was also accused of unlawful marriage – a marriage conscientia mala – under the second Statute of Westminster. It was alleged by Miles that Janekin had conceived a violent affection for Anne Strago, the wife of the wealthy merchant to whom he had been indentured; in the throes of his passion he had determined to use arsenic upon her husband, the said Strago. Since he had lived with his master in St. John’s Street, it was not difficult for him to administer the poison; a bag of arsenic had indeed been found concealed in his private chest. It was then charged that he had prevailed upon the said Anne to marry him – which was, as Miles Vavasour put it, no better than rape and abduction under a feigned name. Anne Strago was subsequently questioned in the house, where she accused Janekin of the several crimes for which he was being tried. She confessed that she had suspected poison, when her husband had complained of a “wambling” in the stomach and a “whipping” in the bowels, but had been too afraid of Janekin to pursue the matter any further. Janekin denied all knowledge of the killing, however, and insisted that Anne Strago had come willingly to his bed even before the death of Strago; he claimed that she had fabricated these charges in order to conceal her own scandalous conduct in consorting with him. He said that he did not know who had murdered the merchant. He offered to do trial by battle, to prove his innocence, but the request was denied; he was not of the right estate.
Martin had been closely observing the judge in this case who, in his scarlet robe and cap of gold silk, seemed to him like some figure who had stepped out of a stained-glass window. He had already become acquainted with the rituals of the court. He had learned law French in order to read the year books and had studied the abridgements as well as the register of writs; he had proceeded from apprentice to inner barrister, but he would not be allowed to practise law for another five years. He possessed a good court hand, however, and Miles Vavasour employed him to complete the appropriate writs and conduct his general business. For Martin, it offered a very practical education in which he learned what no law book could have taught him. He learned that both judge and sergeant believed that any juror who followed his conscience was surrendering to the voice of God; yet a jury which acquitted a prisoner was deemed to be responsible for his future good conduct. In addition anyone found guilty by a jury, who was later proved to be innocent, could bring an action of conspiracy against its members. Cases were heard in groups of three or four at a time, but an individual prisoner might pay to have more jurors assembled if he felt that they might help his cause. If a thief were convicted, the stolen goods were given to the crown; if he were acquitted, he kept them. There were very few cases when restitution was made to the victim of a crime; that is why there were many private bargains struck between the accuser and the accused, so that the former would not give evidence if the latter would restore some of the stolen property.
Martin had been despatched by Miles Vavasour to find two of his most significant witnesses. The beadle of the ward of Farringdon Without, and the overseer of the parish of West Smithfield, were waiting for the man of law by a pillar that was reserved for witnesses and was known as “the tree of truth.” He took off his cap and saluted them. “We have the letter,” the beadle of Farringdon Without told Martin. “It was found in the merchant’s house.”
“Very good. This will please Sir Miles somewhat.” He looked back at the court, and saw Janekin being brought to the Bar. “We must run, not walk,” he said. “The case begins.”
Janekin had been consigned to Newgate, and he looked as if he had contracted the gaol fever; he stank terribly, and Vavasour kept a scented cloth to his nose. The floor of Westminster Hall was covered with rushes containing sweet herbs, to curb the odours of the prisoners, but nothing could remove the stench of the London prisons. All the judges carried with them a ball of linen soaked in aniseed and camomile; before they began their work they drank a posset of hogs’ feet and barley water, too, in order to ward off infection. As Martin came up with the two witnesses, the judge was ordering that a proclamation be made; anyone who had reason to suspect the said Janekin should come forward on the day following.
The overseer of West Smithfield, who had questioned Anne Strago, was then called to give his testimony. He named the prisoner as the felon, outlined the circumstances of the discovery, and recounted Anne’s subsequent charges against Janekin. He was then, according to custom, asked to address the prisoner directly to prove that he did not level his accusations out of malice. “I know you well enough,” he said to Janekin. “You robbed one Blaise White in Long Lane. You beat him. You took his horse and purse from him.” He looked across to Miles Vavasour, who made a sign to continue. “You are a hog who would rather run to turds than to flowers. I have collected three good men of the ward who will bear witness that you are a go-by-ditch, a steal-away, a late at home, a grass-biter, a wild wood-cat, a skulker –”
“Let your lips cover your teeth.” The judge had grown tired of the overseer’s diatribe. “You sing neither good tenor nor good treble, man. Let the sergeant plead the writ of murder.” Martin passed to Miles Vavasour the necessary formulae for pleading the writ; the plaints were confirmed, so that the process could continue. The sergeant turned at once to the act of poisoning. He recounted the circumstances in great detail; as the sergeants were trained to do, he imitated the gestures and expressions both of the murderer and the man who was slain. “Noctanter,” he repeated. It happened by night. He did not know this, but he knew that juries were particularly susceptible to crimes committed under cover of darkness. “I have this letter in my keeping, taken up in the unlucky merchant’s house. It is addressed to the poor afflicted wife. In this letter –” he held it up before the court. “In this letter Janekin confesses his heinous crime and pleads in redress his love for the said Anne.”
“What is this letter? Who wrote it?” The judge took a particular pleasure in interruption. “Tell me in plain words. One may see daylight through a small hole.”
Miles Vavasour then recited the letter of passion, which had in fact been fabricated by Anne Strago who had tired of her young lover. He concluded his reading with a flourish of his voice. “Written in no heart’s ease at London, the fourth day of July.”
“I am hugely astounded.” The judge had decided to intervene once more. “Is there any proof that the prisoner Janekin wrote this?”
“I suppose it to be his work, my lord.”
“Suppose? That is theory only. A great friend is Plato, Sir Miles, but a greater friend is truth. Wherefore suppose?”
Martin had been following this interchange closely, but his attention was distracted by a small man wearing the garb of a physician, who had entered the bounds of the court and was looking intently at Miles Vavasour. Miles, however, was being berated by the judge. “Will you stand angling to catch a few flies? Let the prisoner be unbound and stand forward.”
Janekin was led towards a wide table, laid with green cloth and covered by volumes and parchments, which separated the judge’s high seat and the desk of the sergeant-at-law. He seemed scarcely able to stand upright, and the tipstaff who had brought him from the gaol pleaded that he might be allowed to sit; the judge refused the request, and peremptorily began to question Janekin. The prisoner denied everything. He called himself “the woeful boy,” and complained that he had suffered grievously in Newgate through want of food and lack of physic; furthermore, no one had ever explained the charges against him until that moment.
“So you make your moan, do you?” The judge was very firm. “You make much sullen cheer with your countenance, as I see. But be merry, man. The truth will out. God give grace and all will be well.” Then, quite suddenly, he adjourned the case until the next day under the formula of inquisicio capta. He was fond of surprise in his court, which was the strangest mix
ture of order with confusion, of strict and binding rules of procedure with sudden tirades or arguments, of spectacle and colour with stench and disease.
Martin was about to accompany the sergeant-at-law out of the court, when Miles was stopped by the small man in the physician’s robe. “How do you fare, sir?”
“It is rare to see a leech in the house of the law, Master Gunter. What is your business here?”
“My business is with you. May I?” He took the sergeant’s arm, and they walked towards the pillar known as the tree of truth.
“These are unquiet times, Sir Miles.”
“Yes. The world will turn. Henry will be king.” Only the day before, Henry Bolingbroke had asked a committee to consider “the matter of setting aside King Richard, and of choosing the duke of Lancaster in his stead, and how it was to be done.” It was not by chance, as Miles knew, that several members of Dominus sat upon this committee.
“You are well acquainted with the world, Sir Miles. I have seen it.”
“What have you seen?”
“I have seen how the world is set. But these are close matters, I believe.”
“Matters?”
“They are known only to you and other secret men.”
“Will you break your mind to me, leech?” The sergeant-at-law was becoming impatient. “I am in a maze.”
“No, Sir Miles, I believe you to be in a labyrinth. But it is one of your own making.” Thomas Gunter quickly wiped his mouth with his hand. “Who entered the round tower but William Swinderby? Who but Geoffrey de Calis and an alderman? Who but an under-sheriff of London? Who entered but you, Miles Vavasour? I followed you that night. I saw all.”
Miles Vavasour instinctively put his hand to the dagger beneath his belt.
Thomas Gunter noticed the gesture and immediately became pugnacious. He raised his chin, and for a moment stood on tip-toe. “I have given you language not to your pleasure.”
“I said nothing to you, sir. I pray God make you a good man.”
The sergeant-at-law turned to walk away, but the physician clutched as him. “Tell me, Sir Miles, do you know how to make gunpowder?”
“What?”
“Did you know that its light is so hot that it cannot be quenched with water but only with urine or sand?”
“I hold you to be mad, Thomas Gunter.”
“No. You are the stark fool. I believe that you have caused wild fire in abundance through London. You have fired two churches, and desecrated Paul’s.”
“I have done no such matter!”
“There are two other churches in your sight.”
Miles Vavasour laughed, but there was no laughter in his countenance. “Yours is a vain imagination.”
“I believe that you have met under cover of night with these high men and have machined some plot to bring all into disorder. There are five circles in your litany of death. You are part of some secret coivin.”
“You say on like a child.”
“You must confess, Sir Miles. There is death in the plot.”
“Confess?”
“You must go to Bolingbroke before it is too late to be pitied.”
“Must me no musts.” Miles Vavasour was a tall man, and at the mention of Bolingbroke he seemed to loom over Gunter. “What, leech? Will you be lord? Am I to serve at your behest? You will play bo-peep through a pillory before long. Your trade will not save you. Greater leeches than you have hanged.”
“I have other news of you, Sir Miles, which may change your mind. You have known Rose le Pilcherer. A child.” Vavasour blushed, the colour staining his cheeks, and at once he knew that he had betrayed himself. “You have been seen in a crooked street. In a master street of sin. Turnmill.”
“Kiss the devil’s arse.”
“Dame Alice knows you well. The Wife of Bath believes you to be an old man rotted in sin. Is this not yet vouchsafed to the world?”
“You threaten me, do you?”
“The judges in this hall will commit to prison any person that has been detected in carnal riot with a child.”
“I am hard, Master Gunter. The sun melts the wax on which it shines, but it hardens clay.”
“But then the clay may be broken into pieces. God keep you and serve you, sir.”
Thomas Gunter bowed to the sergeant and walked out of the hall through the exchequer door. He was elated. He had faced down this man and, small though he was, had defeated him in word combat.
Miles Vavasour took out a linen cloth and wiped his face with it; some of the powder with which he had painted his cheeks, for his appearance in court, became smeared upon it. What is the best thing and the worst thing among men? Word is both best and worst. What thing is it that some love and some hate? It is judgement.
Martin left Westminster Hall with a law abridgement tucked under his arm. It was the third day of September, St. Helen’s day, and a procession in the saint’s honour was moving slowly towards the west door of the abbey. Two elderly men were standing upon a pageant wagon drawn by a horse; one held a crucifix, and the other a spade, as a token of the unearthing and finding of the Holy Cross. A young man with them was dressed as St. Helen but, in a most unsaintly fashion, he blew kisses to those assembled along the path. But then he shrank back in alarm. There was a sudden disturbance in the crowd. A group of citizens brought out swords and staffs, and began calling for the nun of Clerkenwell; for the last four days she had been imprisoned in the bishop’s dungeon, according to popular report, and her confinement had incensed a large part of the city. It was somehow associated with the imprisonment of Richard II in the Tower, and some of the crowd now began to shout, “With whom hold you? With King Richard and the true commons!”
Martin watched as two men mounted the pageant wagon and started to drive it towards the crowd. The horse reared up and the wagon was turned upon its side, throwing St. Helen and her entourage upon the pavement. “They are full wild,” Martin said to an apprentice who had come out of the hall to watch the affray.
“Wild men, yes. Vagabonds. They have not a rag to cover their arses. Their mouths are well wet and their sleeves are threadbare.”
“Their force cannot last. They will yield to the king’s peace.”
“Which king?” The apprentice laughed aloud at his own question. “Your man will not hang.”
“Janekin?”
“Miles has hoist himself. If Janekin wrote that letter, then he can read.” Anyone who could prove himself to be literate could plead benefit of clergy before sentence was passed; he would be asked to read a passage from the Bible, commonly known as a “neck verse,” and if his reading was successful he could not be hanged.
“But if he did not write the letter –” Martin hesitated.
“Then he is not in guilt.”
Martin remained at some distance from the commotion, as the men of the watch marched in formation down King’s Street with pikes and guns and pans of fire; they fell upon the “wild men” and quickly dispersed the crowd. Many of those who started the disturbance took to the water, in boats that had been moored by the Thames bank for that purpose, and by nightfall all was quiet.
On the following morning Miles Vavasour visited William Exmewe at St. Bartholomew; they sat in the chapter-house, with the central palm-tree pillar of stone spreading its boughs and branches along the stone ribs of the vault above their heads.
“All is altered upside down,” the sergeant-at-law said. “A man may not stop evil air.” Vavasour was prone to timor anxius, the daughter of melancholy; he had a vivid fantasy and saw manifold images of possible harm. That was why he was a good lawyer: he envisaged all manner of difficulties, and resolved them in advance. But, when they touched his own life, he was helpless. “He has seen us,” he said, “and divined our purpose.”
“Pause a moment, Sir Miles, and recover yourself.” William Exmewe was cautious; like all men who love power, he was deliberate and watchful, subjugating his feelings to the matter in hand. “Who has seen us?”
> “The doctor of physic. Gunter. He saw us coming to the round tower. He knows of the five circles. He knows of Dominus. He will rumble over our heads!”
“He is not of the number of Dominus. How may he know of our purpose, if he is not one of us?”
“How can I tell? In the whirling of the world, I do not know what to think or what to do.”
Exmewe pondered. Had the physician traced the connection between Dominus and the predestined men? Had the sergeant given the physician a list of the five churches? “Tell me the remnant of your thoughts, Miles.”
“What?”
“You have not given all. You have left something behind.”
What the sergeant had not disclosed, of course, was his weakness in Turnmill Street. “I have nothing more to speak. I have knit up the matter, as far as my poor wit allows.”
He looked away as he said this. Exmewe did not believe him and, from that moment, considered the sergeant’s death. “Listen, Miles, I will instruct you in the way you must go. Shadow yourself for a while. Be silent. I will visit this Gunter.”
“It makes no matter which saying we use in manner of a threat. Not all the words in the world –”
“Who said a saying? Mark well, Miles. ‘Timor domini sanctus.’ The fear of God is holy.”
“I would be glad to deal with him, William, but the man is of so diverse mind that there is no hold at him.”
“Hush. Go in peace. I will never disclose your coming. God save you.” Exmewe watched Miles Vavasour as he left the chapter-house. Then he looked up at the palm-tree vault, and admired its beauty. “I am sure, friend Vavasour,” he said out loud, “that these are your last days.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Pardoner’s Tale
On the corner of Wood Street and Cheapside there grew an ancient oak tree known as the Canute Tree. Small charms were hung upon it, both to placate the tree itself and to bless its benefactors with the gift of old age. The London birds loved this tree and would cluster among its branches; they were safe here because no child would stone them or trap them, not even with nooses of horsehair in the winter snow. It was popularly believed that the birds sang in Latin and in Greek, and that their songs lasted no longer than the saying of an Ave Maria.17
The Clerkenwell Tales Page 17