A Plague of Heretics (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  John shook his head at his clerk’s enthusiasm. ‘You came very near to death, Thomas. I am amazed that you have recovered so quickly. But do not strain your good fortune. You must rest until you feel quite well again. Gwyn and I can manage, though I admit we miss your prowess with a pen and parchment.’

  Thomas wriggled with happy embarrassment at this rare praise, then went on to enquire after William de Wolfe’s health.

  ‘I am riding down there to see him after dinner and will be back tomorrow morning,’ replied John. ‘I fear that when I last saw him he had not made your miraculous recovery, but your progress gives me more hope.’

  ‘Brother Saulf was also surprised by the way the fever subsided and my colour faded,’ said the clerk. ‘Unfortunately, two of those poor people in here who also had the yellow curse died, but five more are recovering, two almost as rapidly as myself. The ways of the Almighty are certainly mysterious.’

  John grunted. ‘It’s bloody mysterious why He sends the plague in the first place!’ he muttered, but not wanting to offend his clerk’s deep religious feelings he changed the subject and told Thomas all that had happened down on the quayside.

  ‘No doubt the cathedral will be clamouring for the release of these two scurrilous bastards who fomented the riot,’ he concluded.

  ‘I know of that monk Alan de Bere,’ said Thomas. ‘There is no doubt that his mind is unhinged, poor fellow. He was ejected from St Nicholas Priory several years ago for beating up another brother over some obscure point of religious belief. It was not the first offence, it seems, for he was originally in the mother house at Battle, but was posted out of there for some such similar offence.’

  ‘What about this Reginald Rugge?’ asked the coroner. ‘Do you know anything of him?’ Thomas was usually a mine of information about all things ecclesiastical, but this time he had little to impart.

  ‘I know the name and have seen him about the town – but your wife might know more, for he has some connection with St Olave’s. He helps the priest keep the place in order and assists in a lowly way at the Mass. I think he actually lives in a hut at the back of the church.’

  They talked for a little while longer, though de Wolfe was a poor sick visitor, never knowing what to say. Thomas told him that the monks at St John’s had kept abreast of the outbreaks of plague in the locality, and it seemed that no new cases had been reported for a few days, raising hopes that the present epidemic might be over.

  He left the priory after seeking out Brother Saulf to thank him for his care of Thomas and leaving some more money as a thank-offering, then went up to Rougemont. Here he found Gwyn playing dice in the guard-room with Sergeant Gabriel and a couple of soldiers. They chatted for a few minutes about the drama down on the quayside the previous day, and Gabriel confirmed that the Saint Augustine had sailed on the tide with the fugitives without any further interference.

  ‘What about those two troublemakers you have in the undercroft?’ asked the coroner.

  ‘Ha! The cathedral have already demanded their release,’ growled the sergeant disgustedly. ‘Some lawyer fellow from the cathedral is with the sheriff at this very minute.’

  Hearing this, de Wolfe hurried across the inner ward to the keep and clattered up the wooden steps to the high entrance door. In the sheriffs chamber he found the weaselly deacon from the bishop’s palace seated across the table from Henry de Furnellis. The sheriff looked relieved to see the coroner walk in.

  ‘John, I’m glad to see you! It seems that the cathedral want me to release those two instigators of yesterday’s riotous assembly.’

  De Wolfe had half-expected this turn of events, as he knew that the Church was jealous of their jurisdiction and objected on principle to the secular authorities dealing with anyone with the hair shaved from the top of their heads. But from sheer perversity, he did not want to make it easy for them and immediately objected.

  ‘How can that be, sheriff? These two ruffians are charged with serious offences. Encouraging citizens to become an unruly mob, to assaulting and unlawful imprisonment, to grievous bodily harm – and if they had not been stopped in time, to murder by hanging!’

  He winked at Henry, out of sight of the deacon, and the sheriff carried on with giving the man a hard time.

  ‘Yes, that is indeed the case, Sir John! They must be brought before the king’s justices or his Commissioners, who will probably get to Exeter within the next few months or at most a year!’

  ‘That is not acceptable!’ squeaked the lawyer, a drab little fellow by the name of Roger de Boltebire. ‘The bishop will not countenance such a delay. These men are in holy orders and must be tried by a consistory court held by the bishop’s chancellor.’

  John decided to persecute de Boltebire a little further by contradicting him.

  ‘Several years ago, Bishop Marshal agreed that he would renounce his ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the most serious offences – which these most certainly are.’

  De Boltebire waved his hands vigorously in denial of John’s provocation. ‘That is not strictly true, sir. He said he would allow it for crimes committed within the cathedral precinct, which as you well know is outside the control of the city and county authorities.’

  The sheriff shrugged. ‘Then serious offences committed down on the quayside, far away from the cathedral, are even more correctly dealt with by our secular courts!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ howled the deacon. ‘I am instructed to say that if you are unwilling to allow “benefit of clergy” in this matter, we will take it to the Archbishop in Canterbury!’

  ‘Who is Hubert Walter, also the king’s Chief Justiciar, the head of the legal system in England,’ said John mischievously. He knew this was a contest they could not win, once the bishop returned, but was determined to make the clergy work for their success.

  But the decision was the sheriff’s, not his, and after a further period of wrangling Henry de Furnellis gave in, as John knew he had little choice.

  ‘But how do we know they are really in holy orders?’ demanded the coroner, awkward to the last. ‘Anyone can shave their head or put on a monk’s habit.’

  There was a further argument about proving their literacy and being able to read the Vulgate, but by then Henry had tired of the game.

  ‘Take the damned fellows, will you! They’ve had a taste of prison down below, under Stigand’s tender care for a night, so that alone might curb their desire for rabble-rousing.’ Stigand was the evil, obese gaoler in the cells under the keep, a sadistic moron who revelled in inflicting the tortures of the Ordeal. Roger de Boltebire jumped to his feet, eager to leave these two big men who enjoyed baiting him.

  ‘I’ll send up the two proctors’ bailiffs to take them back under guard. They will be lodged in the cells in the Close.’

  ‘Sheer luxury compared with our accommodation here,’ grinned the sheriff.

  While John was helping Matilda to settle back in Martin’s Lane, a man on remand for robbery with violence decided to turn ‘approver’, choosing to try to avoid execution by turning ‘king’s evidence’ against his accomplices, who had escaped when he himself was arrested by the hue and cry.

  So the coroner spent the rest of the morning in the warder’s tiny room at the base of one of the towers of the South Gate, which acted as the city gaol. The few cells in the keep of the castle were for short-term prisoners and those to be subjected to the tortures of the Ordeal, but suspects awaiting trial at the burgess courts, the sheriff’s county court or the very intermittent Eyres and Commissioners’ courts were housed in the South Gate.

  John’s function was to take his confession for eventual submission to the royal justices and, in the absence of Thomas, he had one of the sheriff’s clerks to make a record.

  As the terrified man’s confession was punctuated by sobbing, screaming and grovelling on his knees before the coroner, the process took up most of the time until dinner, when John went back to Martin’s Lane. Treading delicately, he managed to survive the
meal without any major outburst or denunciation from his wife, before announcing that he must go again to Stoke to visit his brother.

  ‘It is too late for me to go there and then return tonight,’ he said cautiously. ‘I will have to stay with my family and come back early in the morning.’

  He expected Matilda to launch into her usual whining about being left alone once again – not that she ever relished his company when he was there, he thought bitterly. But she made no protest as she informed him that it mattered little, as she had an important meeting at St Olave’s early that evening.

  ‘Father Julian has called his congregation together to organise a protest to the canons about the shockingly lenient way in which those heretics were allowed to escape!’ she said in the strident tones of a determined campaigner. ‘We are going to send a deputation to demand proper action against this hateful seed of ungodliness that is being allowed to take root in our city! Some of the canons are of a like mind, but we need to influence the bishop into taking a firmer stand, as the Holy Father has commanded!’

  Glad that his wife’s new-found crusade was at least turning her attention off himself, he encouraged her to tell him more.

  ‘Is this Julian Fulk’s own idea?’ he asked. ‘Or are all the parish priests being encouraged to do the same?’

  She gnawed some more meat from the capon’s leg she was holding before replying. ‘The idea was suggested to him by our neighbour, Doctor Clement,’ she admitted. ‘He is a forthright man with increasing influence in the town, and no one else I know has greater devotion to the well-being of the Holy Church.’

  De Wolfe held his tongue but thought that it was a pity that the physician did not use some of this enthusiasm to help the poorer people when they needed medical aid.

  As soon as his wife had lumbered up to her solar to sleep off the effects of a large meal, John collected Odin from Andrew’s stables and began his journey down to Stoke-in-Teignhead. On previous trips he had seen no sign of footpads on the road, so he decided against taking Gwyn as an escort, as with Thomas out of action there was no one else to attend to any coroner’s business if some new case cropped up. With the weather cool, but dry and frost-free, the going was good, and he covered the thirteen miles to Dawlish at a steady trot in three hours, stopping once at an alehouse to water Odin and himself.

  Riding resolutely through the little port without diverting to Hilda’s house, he reached the River Teign to find the tide had not dropped far enough on the ebb to ford across, so he led his horse on to the flat-bottomed ferry and paid a penny to cross to Shaldon with dry legs.

  Soon afterwards, he was riding into Stoke, nestling in its sheltering valley, and turned into the manor yard with some trepidation, unsure of what he might find. He left Odin with one of the stable boys and hurried into the square-built manor house. His mother and her steward were coming to meet him, and from their expressions he knew that, unlike with Thomas, no miraculous cure could be expected.

  ‘How is he?’ he asked as soon as he had hugged and kissed his mother and sister, who had hurried out of William’s sickroom on hearing John arrive.

  ‘Very little changed, I’m afraid,’ said Enyd sadly. ‘The yellowness has faded somewhat and he is half-conscious some of the time.’

  He followed them into the sickroom, where the steward’s wife was bathing William’s brow with scented water. His brother looked haggard and drawn, cheekbones standing out under stretched skin, giving his face almost the appearance of a skull. His eyes were half-open, but they were dull and failed to focus on John, even when he stood over him and spoke softly to him.

  ‘We had an apothecary over from Totnes yesterday,’ said Evelyn. ‘A sensible man, but he admitted there was little he could do. He said the actual plague seems to have receded, but that it must have damaged the balance of William’s humours.’

  John sat on a stool alongside the bed for a time, holding one of his brother’s bony hands and talking quietly to him. He spoke of their boyhood together, their adventures in the surrounding woods and the ponies they had ridden, but William made no sign of understanding what he said. Eventually, John went back into the hall for a meal and to discuss domestic matters and the running of the manor.

  ‘So far, our steward, bailiffs and reeves have coped well, both here and at Holcombe,’ said his mother. ‘But soon there will have to be decisions made about the ploughing and what stock can be kept over the winter. Without William, we are not sure that we can make the right decisions.’

  ‘I will do what I can to help, Mother,’ said John. ‘But I am no farmer, God knows!’

  He stayed another hour, but there was nothing useful he could do, apart from listen to the steward and bailiff as they tried to explain the rudiments of estate management to him. It was dusk when he set off again, this time aiming only to ride the few miles back to Dawlish. The tide had dropped in the meanwhile and he was able to ride Odin in the twilight across the river, between the sandbanks. Then slowly and carefully he traced his way back along the coastal track to Dawlish, thankful for a half-moon shining in a clear sky.

  Hilda was surprised to see him turn up on her doorstep in the dark, but nonetheless delighted. When he had settled Odin in a nearby livery stable, he came back for another meal in Hilda’s kitchen, before spending a blissful night in her bed up in the solar.

  Just as the coroner was sloshing his way across the shallows of the River Teign, back in Exeter two score parishioners were converging on the small church of St Olave. They assembled expectantly on the earthen floor of the nave, beaten rock-hard by generations of worshipping feet. Some were there because of their obedience to Father Julian’s summons, others from a burning antipathy to heretics – and the remainder out of sheer curiosity. Matilda was escorted in by Clement and Cecilia, whom she had met as they all came out of their front doors. She had a ready-made excuse for her husband’s absence, by explaining that he had to go to his manor to visit his very sick brother, which set Cecilia off on an anxious enquiry as to how William was progressing. Matilda had no real idea, but muttered some platitudes until she could change the subject.

  ‘I think it very virtuous of your husband to encourage our reverend father to call this meeting,’ she said earnestly to Cecilia. ‘I wish more eminent people in the city would show such public spirit.’

  The doctor’s wife made no reply, but looked at Clement as if to pass on the burden of response to him, which he gladly took on.

  ‘I suggested it, rather than merely encouraging the good priest,’ he said smugly. ‘It is time that some firm action was taken, after the fiasco of that enquiry and then the blasphemers being allowed to walk free and vanish from the country.’

  He assumed an expression of sad piety as he continued. ‘I regret to say that the law officers, including your husband Sir John, did not come out well from that episode.’

  Matilda tried hard to conceal her anger, mainly directed at John. He had shamed her before this devout physician, who was gently, but pointedly, condemning her own husband. But some of her ire was kept for Clement himself, for being so insensitive as to publicly criticise her spouse. She tried to recover some merit for de Wolfe and regain her own lost face.

  ‘It is difficult for him, sir! He is a senior law officer, sworn to uphold the King’s Peace. Whatever his own feelings might be, he has to abide by the statutes set down by his masters in London and Rouen.’

  ‘I am sure Clement was aware of that,’ hastily broke in Cecilia, anxious to cover any embarrassment caused by the doctor’s gaffe. ‘The Church and the state are always uneasy partners, as old King Henry discovered at Canterbury.’

  Any further awkwardness was thankfully erased by the appearance of the parish priest, who appeared from the tiny sacristy to stand on the single step that separated chancel from nave. Julian Fulk was a short, rotund man, unctuous in manner and full of his own self-importance, though secretly frustrated by his lack of advancement in the Church, feeling that he had the potential to be a ca
non or even a bishop and resenting being kept back in one of the smallest churches in the city. He seized every opportunity to make his presence known and saw this current heretic scare as another chance to make his name before the more senior figures at the cathedral.

  Fulk raised his arms to command silence, the embroidered chasuble over his white alb rising like a pair of wings. Then a sonorous stream of Latin emerged from his mouth, which, apart from the physician, not a single person present could understand, but assumed it was a prayer.

  Reverting to English, he asked for God’s blessing on those present and their families and added a profound wish that the yellow plague would now leave them in peace. Round-faced and completely bald-headed, apart from a narrow rim of sandy hair, the priest then launched into a tirade against those in the city and the surrounding countryside who were denying the right of the Holy Church to mediate with God on their behalf. There was nothing new in what he had to say, but he was a good orator and a number of the congregation began mouthing ‘Amens’ and other more earthy condemnations of the blasphemers.

  ‘The ease with which these disciples of the devil escaped any justice cannot be tolerated,’ declaimed Fulk as he wound up his exhortations. ‘Though the bishops, the archdeacons and the canons are the captains of our faith, we are the army they lead and we must impress upon them that we desire that this corruption in our midst is stamped out!’

  After more in this vein, the portly priest made a beckoning gesture at the front row and invited Clement of Salisbury to stand alongside him on the chancel step.

  ‘We are fortunate in having not only a renowned physician in our congregation, a true disciple of St Luke in the healing arts, but one who is also a true soldier of Christ, unafraid to speak his mind and to demand the action we wish to see employed against these evil-minded heretics!’

  He stepped to one side to allow Clement centre place, and the doctor threw out his arms as if to bless the audience and summon down the angels at the same time. Tonight he was soberly dressed in a long black tunic, without the central white apron that was affected by many physicians. His head was encased in a tight-fitting helmet of white linen, tied under the chin.