A Plague of Heretics (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  De Wolfe was immediately more concerned. ‘There is plague at Clyst? I had not heard that!’

  ‘Nor had I until an hour ago. All the other slaughterers and salters have downed tools and run home. Only one old man has stayed to throw the hogs some food.’

  ‘And it is at Dartmouth as well?’

  Richard nodded in agitation, then swallowed his wine in a gulp. ‘I have large orders for the king’s army to fulfil! How can I carry on with the workers refusing to attend to their duties?’

  ‘They could hardly work if they were sick or dead,’ pointed out John. ‘Best they stay away from their workplace until the danger of infection is past.’

  This only inflamed de Revelle even more. ‘Impossible! Think of the money I am losing every day! Unless I can find other men who will take on the tasks, I will be ruined. I cannot feed hundreds of pigs and get nothing in return!’

  ‘So why come to me about it?’ demanded John. ‘I am a law officer, not a physician or apothecary!’

  ‘Surely there is something you can do, you and that idle fellow now sitting in my chamber in Rougemont!’ brayed Richard. ‘Forbid ships from entering our ports, as I have heard that it is likely that foreign seamen are bringing the poison. And also make it unlawful for these workers to stay away from their employment. If they were serfs on a manor, they would have no choice but to work for their lord.’

  John looked scathingly at his brother-in-law. ‘And just how do you think that could be done? Most of the seamen coming to our harbours live there. They are now returning for the winter season. Would you have us ban them from their homes?’

  Richard scowled at him. ‘Then the workers! Surely they can be put back to their labours?’

  ‘How? Send a troop of men-at-arms to each of your piggeries, to stand prodding the men with their lances?’

  He advanced to the hearth and ostentatiously stood close to Richard, easing him away from the fire.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done. We all have to make the best of a bad situation and pray that it does not spread to obliterate the city and the county, as has happened sometimes abroad.’

  ‘We must all pray to Almighty God for deliverance,’ said Matilda, speaking for the first time. ‘For once, John is right. There’s nothing that can be done by we weak mortals.’

  ‘And as for physicians,’ added de Wolfe scornfully, ‘they can only offer the same advice – prayer! We have a smart doctor next door now, but he’s made it clear that he won’t go within a furlong of a plague victim!’

  De Revelle huffed and puffed for a time, but it was apparent that he had no support from either Matilda or John. This was an unusual state of affairs, as though Matilda’s former hero-worship of her rich elder brother had collapsed with her realisation that he was a rogue, she normally contradicted her husband on principle.

  Eventually, having gained nothing from his visit, he departed, muttering about having to find more men at a higher rate of pay to deal with his pigs.

  ‘He thinks of nothing else but his purse and his treasure chest,’ grunted John after the front door had slammed. ‘He has two manors and a rich wife, so why is he always pursuing more wealth?’

  Matilda hunched in her chair, unwilling to side with her husband any longer. ‘At least he is aiding the economy of the county and giving work to many men,’ she sniped.

  ‘And what d’you think I and Hugh de Relaga are doing?’ demanded John. ‘We ship almost half the raw wool that goes from the Exe and a goodly proportion of the finished cloth. It’s that that keeps those in this house warm and well fed!’

  Matilda sniffed disdainfully, then returned to attack from a different direction. ‘You should not cast aspersions on Doctor Clement like that,’ she complained. ‘He is a professional man and, if he is so busy with his regular patients to attend to the poor, then that is his concern.’

  ‘He’s afraid of catching the yellow distemper, that’s what!’ countered John.

  ‘And who isn’t afraid?’ she demanded. ‘You and that perverted little priest might be foolhardy enough to risk bringing it home to your family and friends, but normal people keep well clear for everyone’s sake.’

  Another developing row was averted by Mary coming in to ask if they were ready for their supper, as it was now virtually dark outside. John suspected that she had been listening at the inner door and had interrupted to save him becoming enmeshed in yet another futile shouting match with his cantankerous wife.

  The prospect of food always mollified her, and soon they were sitting at the table in smouldering silence as they ate their way through venison in broth, carp and eels in a crust and finally frumenty.

  Afterwards, John sat by the fire with a pot of ale and his wife dozed in her chair opposite, while a cold wind whined around the shutters and sudden draughts sucked showers of sparks up the wide chimney. It was not a night on which to expect visitors, and John was all the more surprised to hear an urgent knocking on the outer door. Mary usually answered it, but it took her a time to get around the side passage from her hut in the yard, so he went out into the vestibule and pulled open the heavy oak door. A horse was tied to the rail across the lane and a man stood before him, shivering in a damp riding cloak.

  ‘Sir John, it’s me, Alfred from Stoke!’

  In the dim light from a pitch-brand guttering on the corner of the Close, de Wolfe recognised the reeve from the family manor at Stoke-in-Teignhead, where he had been born and brought up. Surprised and apprehensive, he ushered the man inside and, aware of Matilda in the hall, took him around to Mary’s kitchen-shed, where a good fire burned and the man could get warm and have some food. But first Alfred had to give his momentous news.

  ‘I have bad tidings, Sir John. The yellow plague has appeared in the village and two are dead and half a dozen taken sick. I am afraid that your brother William is one of them!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  In which Crowner John rides to Stoke

  At dawn next morning, three riders left the West Gate soon after it was opened and splashed through the ford across the Exe, heading for the coast road southwards. Grim-faced, John de Wolfe was in the lead, with Alfred and Gwyn close behind. Thomas had been left behind, as though he offered to come, he was an indifferent horseman and would have slowed them down on his pony. Even John had left his heavy destrier, Odin, behind and taken a swifter rounsey from Andrew’s livery stable to speed his journey. As they cantered down the track towards Powderham and Dawlish, John soberly recalled the events that had set them on this mission.

  The previous evening, the reeve had explained how John’s mother, Enyd, had sent him to Exeter with the news that his elder brother had been stricken with the fever that had crept into Stoke over the past four days. So far, eight had been afflicted and two of those had died. William, whose solicitude for his free tenants and villeins was well known, had refused to hide himself away in the manor house, but had insisted on visiting the sick and arranging for food and firewood to be supplied to them.

  ‘He forbade the ladies to accompany him, though they both wished to help,’ Alfred had said. ‘Within a day and a night, he started shivering and soon was yellow, being brought back to collapse on his bed. Only God knows why he was so stricken, when myself, the priest and several others escaped, though we were also helping to aid the sufferers.’

  ‘What of my mother and sister? Do they remain in good health?’ demanded John. His mother, Enyd, was a sprightly woman in her early sixties, and Evelyn, six years younger than John, was a placid spinster.

  ‘They show no signs of the curse, thanks be to Christ,’ Alfred reassured him. There was no one else in the family to be concerned about, as William’s wife Alice had died of a childbirth fever three years earlier.

  The horses made good time on the firm roads, as the slight frost that had followed the rain had hardened the mud without being severe enough to leave icy patches. In an hour and a half they reached Dawlish, and it was with reluctance that John trotted straight through the l
ittle port without calling on Hilda. A few miles further along the track that hugged the coast, they passed the turning into Holcombe, the other de Wolfe manor, where Hilda’s father was the reeve.

  ‘Do they know there about my brother’s illness?’ shouted John over the noise of the hooves.

  ‘I sent a message yesterday, but told them to stay away from Stoke in case they bring back the contagion,’ replied Alfred.

  At Teignmouth the tide was ebbing fast out of the river, but they had to wait fretfully for half an hour until the water was low enough for their horses to safely navigate the ford to the sand-spit on the other side. From there it was only a few minutes’ canter to reach the head of the wooded valley that held John’s birthplace of Stoke-in-Teignhead. The village was unnaturally quiet; no work was being done in the strip-fields and the single village street was empty. Smoke filtered out from beneath the eaves of many of the tofts to prove that people were alive, but the villagers were shunning any unnecessary contact with each other. As they passed two of the small thatched cottages, John saw ominous boards nailed across the doors, with a black cross painted on them.

  They neared the manor house at the further end of the village before they saw the first living person walking towards them, the priest of St Andrew’s Church. He held up his hand and John reined up alongside, fearful that Father Martin had been to the manor to administer the last rites. Thankfully, the sturdy priest was more reassuring.

  ‘Lord William is no worse, even if not improved, Sir John. He is weak, but still alive, for which I thank the Holy Virgin – as well as your mother and sister, who are tending him like a baby.’

  The parson called William ‘lord’ as befitted the eldest son and holder of the manor title, whereas John was ‘sir’ by virtue of his military knighthood.

  ‘Is there more of the plague in the village?’ asked John.

  ‘Two more of the sick children have died, God save their souls,’ admitted Father Martin. ‘And two more have fallen ill in another house. I’m on my way to them now, to see if there is anything I can do.’

  He looked exhausted, and John suspected that he had hardly slept since the yellow plague had come to Stoke.

  They rode on and clattered over the small bridge across the ditch around the house, a defence which had not been needed since before John was born. Inside the stockade, almost an acre of ground held the square stone-built house and the profusion of sheds, huts and barns that made this a working farm as well as a family home.

  Though the courtyard had been empty, the sound of their arrival brought boys out of the stables to take their horses. The old steward hurried out to greet them and shepherded John and Gwyn into the house. There was a large central hall, with two pairs of rooms divided off from it on either side and an upper solar built out over a porch at the front. John ordered Gwyn to stay in the hall, as he did not wish to increase the risk of him catching the contagion in the sickroom and taking it back to his family.

  In one of the side rooms he found William lying on a low bed and attended solicitously by his mother and sister, with the steward’s large wife and a younger servant hovering anxiously in the background. The Lord of Stoke appeared to be asleep, his mouth open and his eyes shut, but his breathing was laboured and a sheen of sweat lay on his forehead and face, in spite of the coldness of the room. His face was yellow, as were the hands that lay across his chest. On a table near the bed were bowls of boiled water, flasks of liniment and cloths to lay on the patient’s fevered brow and body. A large bunch of herbs was stuck into a jug, and in the firepit at one side of the room fragrant smoke curled up from where other dried herbs had been sprinkled on the logs. These attempts at treatment suggested desperate frustration that was echoed in the haggard faces of Evelyn and Enyd. They came to embrace him, Evelyn with tears seeping from her eyes.

  ‘He is no worse today, though no better,’ whispered his mother. ‘All we can do is pray for him.’

  They all sank to their knees in the clean rushes that covered the floor, hands clasped and heads bowed. John initially felt he was being false, as he had little real faith in pleading for his brother’s recovery when children were lying dead in the village from the same ailment. But as he raised his head and saw his brother’s face as he strained to cling to life, a wave of love and pity flowed over him, and he fervently asked for God’s mercy on a man who had come from the same womb as himself.

  After few moments Enyd rose and took John’s arm to lead him back into the hall, where Gwyn was waiting with the reeve.

  ‘You men must be tired and hungry after your journey,’ she said firmly.

  The steward marshalled a couple of young serving girls to bring food and drink from the outside kitchen, and soon they were sitting eating at a table near the firepit.

  ‘We feel so helpless to do anything either for William or the others in the village,’ said a distraught Evelyn. ‘There is no physician anywhere nor even an apothecary nearer than Brixham.’

  ‘I doubt it would help much if there were,’ said John cynically. ‘I have a new doctor living next door to me and he flatly refuses to attend any victims, saying there is nothing he can do for them.’

  The steward, hovering behind them with a jug of cider, said that he had heard that morning that new cases were being spoken of in Brixham and Dartmouth, further down the coast.

  ‘All at ports and harbours,’ muttered Gwyn. ‘It must be coming in from abroad, surely?’

  ‘I seems like it, but how would it have reached Stoke?’ growled John.

  ‘We have tradesmen in every day,’ answered Evelyn. ‘They bring in fish from Teignmouth – and we had a chapman through here last week. God knows where he’d been before coming here.’

  John could hear the suppressed panic in everyone’s voice, which was also beginning to appear in Exeter. This was an invisible foe, stalking the streets and fields with a stealth that could not be detected. If disease came from a rabid dog, then it could be slain, but this yellow plague could be neither seen, heard nor smelled, which made it doubly terrifying.

  They went back and sat alongside William’s pallet for a time, watching helplessly as he lay inert, only his rapid breathing showing that he was still alive. From time to time the steward’s wife moved forward and gently wiped his face with a cloth dipped in warm scented water.

  ‘Has he been awake at all today?’ asked John.

  ‘He mumbled and muttered some hours ago, but has not spoken rationally to us since last evening. He has passed no water since then, which worries me. The last lot was almost green.’

  ‘Has he drunk anything?’

  ‘We tipped a little watered ale between his lips, but he has swallowed very little,’ replied Enyd.

  John recalled from his fighting days that wounded men sometimes died of thirst as much as their injuries and, desperate to find some advice to contribute, suggested that they tried harder to get some fluid into his brother.

  ‘I’ll try to get that bloody doctor to come down here with me,’ he grunted. ‘And if that fails, then at least a good apothecary.’

  At noon they sat down to dinner in the hall; though the food was ample and well cooked, no one had much of an appetite – not even Gwyn, whose capacity for his victuals was legendary. Afterwards, they sat again with William, who had hardly moved on his mattress, until John’s mother decided that there was no point in his staying too late.

  ‘Get you back to Exeter, my son. There’s nothing you can do here. I know you will have duties there to carry out.’

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, later in the day, and will stay until next morning,’ he promised. ‘If you need me more urgently before then, send Alfred and I’ll come, even if it be in the middle of the night!’

  As they were climbing into their saddles in the bailey, with the family and servants gathered around, his mother asked him if he was going to call upon Hilda on the way home. Enyd was very fond of the handsome blonde from Dawlish – if there had not been the social gap between the
daughter of a Saxon reeve and a knight’s son, she would have welcomed her as a daughter-in-law. But her husband wanted John married off into an aristocratic Norman family and had pushed him into wedlock with Matilda de Revelle. Enyd had done her best to accept Matilda, but in return John’s wife had never concealed her disdain for his mother, mainly because of her Cornish and Welsh parentage.

  John considered her question as he arranged his cloak over the back of his saddle. ‘I think not, Mother. I would never forgive myself if I took contagion to her, just for the sake of seeing her face for a few minutes. Alfred says Holcombe is free of it – it would be better if she went to stay there with her parents, rather than keep to Dawlish, with its ships and ship-men coming and going.’

  This time, it was only Gwyn and his master who trotted off through the stricken village. John hoped that he would not see Alfred coming again to Exeter, as it would probably mean that he brought news of William’s death.

  As they rode, Gwyn told him of what he had learned the previous evening from his tour of the taverns. ‘I found a couple of men who knew some heretics,’ he said. ‘They seem to think that there is no law against it, as no one gets punished.’

  ‘Did you get to speak to any yourself?’ called John as they rode almost saddle to saddle along the coast road.

  His officer shook his bushy head. ‘No, those sort are not likely to be great frequenters of alehouses. But I know they meet in various places to discuss their beliefs.’

  He said that one group used an old derelict barn off the Crediton road, not far from the village of Ide, which the potman at the Bush had mentioned.

  ‘Who are these people, I wonder?’ queried de Wolfe. ‘We know our corpse was a woodworker and, if Thomas was right about the other, he was just a labourer.’

  ‘One fellow said that several he knew were foreigners, probably French,’ replied Gwyn. ‘Maybe they were from the Languedoc; that seems to be a breeding place for these folk.’

  They passed through Dawlish, and once again John had to resist the temptation to call on Hilda, though this time the fear of bringing contamination, however small the risk, made it easier for him to pass by. They reached Exeter as dusk was falling, and Gwyn went off to the Bush to see his wife and check his latest batch of ale-mash. John carried on to Martin’s Lane to hand back his hired horse, but when he emerged from the stables he did not go straight across to his own front door. Instead, he went to the next house and rapped on the heavy oak with the pommel of his dagger. It was opened by a young maid, but before he could state his business Cecilia appeared behind her.